A Podcast to the Curious – The M.R. James Podcast

Today we head to East Anglia for a round of golf in the company of enthusiastic James fan H.R. Wakefield. No whistling ‘ere though – you might just wake up something nasty…

• Wakefield published seven volumes of ghost stories between 1928 and 1961, but also wrote three detective novels and two non-fiction ‘true crime’ studies.
• He served in the military and as a private secretary to his father, a bishop, before moving to the publishing industry, where he spent most of his working life and which is reflected in a lot of his stories. He was also a keen sportsman, reflected in his stories which feature a lot of golf!
• Much of his personal life was opaque until recently, when Barbara Rodin tracked down a living relative. The picture she painted of Wakefield was not entirely endearing. Barbara’s introduction to the Ash Tree Press edition of Old Man’s Beard, Wakefield’s third volume of ghost stories, sets out this more intimate biography (trigger warning for the tormenting of small children and cats).
• M.R. James wrote that Wakefield’s first volume of ghosts stories, They Return at Evening “gives us a mixed bag, from which I should remove one or two that leave a nasty taste. Among the residue are some admirable pieces, very inventive.”
• True to this description, many of Wakefield’s ghost stories contain brash and depressing misogyny. This is especially so in those stories written after his first volume and, perhaps as a result, we can’t find any of his collections in print. Ash Tree Press editions of his volumes of ghost stories are however available as ebooks and include Rodin’s honest assessment of his writing.

This episode Mike and Will travel back to 16th century Cambridge to get acquainted with a rather unsavory guest at Jesus College in ‘Brother John’s Bequest‘ by Arthur Gray. Booze, burials and bell-book-and-candle are the order of the day here, with a side order of spitting. Eww.

Big thanks to Kirsty for providing the excellent readings for this episode!

Notes

• Arthur Gray (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This excellent Ghosts & Scholars article by Rosemary Pardoe provides biographical information on Arthur Gray, as well as plot synopses for all the stories in ‘Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye’. It also contains the poem that we mention in this episode, published in 1911, which speculated about the identity of the then-mysterious ‘Ingulphus’!
• Ingulf, Benedictine abbot of Crowland (wikipedia)
  The 11th century monk Ingulf (or Ingulphus in Latin) is where Arthur Gray borrowed his pseudonym. Ingulf’s writings were studied extensively by historians but his name became a byword for unreliability when the works were found to be a forgery, written long after his death!
• Arthur Gray and the Ghost Club (anilbalan.com)
  This blog post discusses Gray’s most famous story The Everlasting Club, mentioning how it quickly came to be part of the lore of Jesus College.

This episode Mike and Will put on their dancing shoes and head out to the lawn, only to encounter The Man with the Roller by E.G. Swain!

Massive thanks to podcaster Jim Moon of hypnogoria.com for letting us use extracts from his reading of this story in the episode! You can listen to the full reading, as well as all Jim’s other E.G. Swain readings here.

Note: we realised after recording that the repeated references to dancing on the lawn ire probably a bit of black humour regarding Andrew Birch who, being hanged, clearly did some ‘dancing’ of his own in relation to his activities on the lawn!

Notes:

• E.G. Swain (Wikipedia)
  There is rather scant information about E.G. Swain available online, but his wikipedia page is a good place to start.
• The Stoneground Ghost Tales (Project Gutenberg)
  This story and all the others in the volume can be read and downloaded for free here.
• Stanground (Google maps)
  The real-world Stoneground can be found just outside Peterborough. The church is much as Swain would have known it. The rest of the village, not so much, but these historical maps can give you a good idea of what it was like before the modern housing and industrial estates took hold.

We liven up our social distancing by finishing off the Benson boys, with Fred’s How Fear Departed From the Long Gallery.  Dirty Dick gets his comeuppance for a murderous deed, but can the ghosts of his victims be laid to rest?

Trigger warning for gratuitous violence against children.  And yes, we do mean it this time!

Thank you again to the fabulous Richard Crowest of the ‘Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson’ podcast for giving us permission to use extracts from his reading of this story in the episode. You can find out more about Richard, including his E.F. Benson and ‘Short Stories by Saki’ podcasts, at www.corvidae.co.uk.

• Text of How Fear on Gutenberg, as part of Fred Benson’s collected ghost stories.  We covered EF Benson’s Negotiatum Perambulams in Episode 70.
• E.F. Benson (wikipedia) Wikipedia has a good summary of E.F. Benson’s life, including links to information on his fascinating family.
• Life of E.F. Benson by Brian Masters (AbeBooks.co.uk) Brian Masters’ excellent biography of Benson is a must-read for those interested in learning more about Benson.
• A long review of How Fear on Tor.com, including  speculation on the fate of Colonel Blantyre’s member.

This episode explores some ecclesiastical terrors in R.H. Benson’s ‘The Traveller’. It was ‘too ecclesiastical’ for M.R. James, but will Mike and Will find something to enjoy in this tale of perturbed priests, creepy confessionals and historical haunting?

Thanks to our reader for this episode Debbie Wedge!

Show notes:

• Robert Hugh Benson (catholiceducation.org)
  Benson was ordained a priest by his Archbishop father in 1895 before sending shockwaves through the church by converting to Catholicism in 1904, the year after this story was published.
• The Light Invisible by R.H. Benson (Gutenberg)
  The volume that this story appears in can be read in full online at Project Gutenberg.
• Frederick Rolfe (wikipedia)
  Benson’s close friendship and literary collaboration with the eccentric Frederick Rolfe (the self-styled ‘Baron Corvo’) threatened to derail Benson’s religious career.
• Thomas Becket (wikipedia)
  Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. During his life he quarreled with King Henry II over the rights of the church, and was made a saint after his death.

Excitement abounds in the podcast house as Big Santy C leaves us a new BBC Ghost Story for Christmas, courtesy of BBC4 and Mr Mark Gatiss!  Will and Mike offer their humble thoughts on this festive treat.

Show notes:

• A clutch of reviews of Martin’s Close, from the Radio Times, i, Metro, Telegraph and Warwick University Student newspaper.
• Our thoughts on the story back in 2012, including a visit to the Devon village in which the story is set and a chat with a garrulous innkeeper.

Image and excerpts from Radio Times and BBC4.

This episode Mike and Will indulge in murder, moralising and supernatural goat-based mayhem in A.C. Benson’s ‘Out of the Sea’.

Big thanks to our reader for this episode Debbie Wedge, and don’t forget to check out her M.R. James-themed t-shirt designs, ‘No diggin’ ere‘ and ‘Barchestering‘!

Notes:

• A.C. Benson (Wikipedia)
  A.C. Benson was one of MRJ’s closest friends throughout his life. They attended prep school, Eton and King’s College together, worked together in later life and remained regular correspondents right up until Benson’s death in 1925.
• ‘Out of the sea’ (full story – Project Gutenberg)
  You can read this story online, or download as a free ebook at Project Gutenberg. The story features in Benson’s 1904 collection ‘The Isles of Sunset’.
• Wreckers (wikipedia)
  In this episode we speculated that Mister Grimston might have been involved in ‘Wrecking’, the act of luring passing ships into dangerous waters to sink them so their cargo could be stolen.
• A.C. Benson and Cambridge (Ged Martin)
  An extended essay about A.C. Benson that touches on his whole life at Cambridge, as well as his relationship with his father and his mental health.
• Why is the Devil also a goat? (Refinery29.com)
  This article explores why goats became associated with evil in both religious symbolism and popular culture.

Like a prodigal and slightly deranged friend, Will and Mike return to explore another author inspired by MR James.  This week we look at the story By One, By Two and By Three, by Adrian Ross.

Show notes

• By One, By Two and By Three is widely published in ghost story anthologies, but you can also find it online.
• Adrian Ross was the pen-name of Arthur Reed Ropes, an accomplished academic and lyricist.  Ropes used the name when he started writing for musical comedies in the late 1880s.  By One… now often appears under this pseudonym.
• However, the story was originally published anonymously when it appeared in Temple Bar magazine in December 1887. As Richard Dolby has explained, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the story was linked to Ross/Ropes. Most confusingly, it appeared in the US under the pseudonym “Stephen Hall”!
• By One… was printed before Monty started telling his stories at the Chit Chat Society.  But Ropes, as Adrian Ross, published second ghost story The Hole of the Pit in 1914, just after the start of the First World War.  It was dedicated “To Montague Rhodes James, Provost of King’s and teller of ghost stories.” This was all the excuse we needed to include Ropes/Ross as one of those writers inspired by James!
• Though Ropes and James were contemporaries at King’s College, a forward to Dolby’s book suggests MR James had no recollection of his colleague writing By One… when asked about it by a friend in the 1930s.  Monty replied: “Best thanks for a very good story. I can’t place the author… though at first I had wondered if it could prove to be Rhoda Broughton who sometimes wrote a tale of this kind, as I don’t doubt you know, and a practiced writer, I judge. But there are no tricks of style that I can pitch upon. No. I must give it up; but I have enjoyed this story very much.”  Did he ever read the story while at Cambridge with Ropes – and did he draw any influences from it?
• A TV version of By One, By Two and By Three was aired in the US in February 1972, as part of the horror show Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.  It’s a rather fun adaptation – and features a young Mark Hamill as a surly delivery boy!

This episode Mike & Will kick off Season 3 with ‘An Antiquary’s Ghost Story’ by Augustus Jessopp! Scroll down for a full list of the ‘James Gang’ authors we will be covering over the next 15 episodes.

Big thanks to our reader for this episode, Debbie Wedge!

Show notes:

• Collected writings of Augustus Jessopp (gothictexts.wordpress.com)
  The ghostly writing of Augustus Jessopp and more can be downloaded for free on Kindle, Epub and PDF here, courtesy of friend of the show Dewi Evans.
• The Antiquarian of Arcady, Augustus Jessopp (Violet Books)
  This brief biography of Jessopp by Jessica Amanda Salmonson touches on his life, work and relationship with M.R. James.
• Augustus Jessopp’s obituary (The Times)
  Jessopp’s obituary mentions the supernatural experience described in this story, and its part in drawing Henry Walpole to the public’s attention.
• The Arcadian Club newsletter archive (derehamhistory.com)
  The Arcadian Club is a specialist group dedicated to Augustus Jessopp. You can download back issues of the clubs newsletter from their website.
• ‘One generation of a Norfolk House’ by Augustus Jessopp (archive.org)
  Augustus Jessopp’s book about the Walpole family.
• William of Norwich (wikipedia)
  The 1144 murder of William or Norwich was the topic of ‘The Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich’, the book M.R. James and Augustus Jessopp collaborated on and published in 1896.
• Velázquez ‘Dead Soldier’ (nationalgallery.org.uk)
  This is the story that Jessopp mentions in this story. Check out that hand!
• Mannington Hall, Norfolk (manningtongardens.co.uk)
  This picturesque country estate is the location for this story.
• Images of Henry Walpole (Google Images)
  Let us know your thoughts on whether you think the available paintings of Henry Walpole match Jessopp’s description of the ghost he encountered!

Season 3: The James Gang

Over the next 15 episodes we will be looking at stories from ‘The James Gang’, the group comprising authors which were either personal acquaintances of M.R. James, or whose stories were directly inspired by his work. The authors we are covering are:

• Augustus Jessop
• Adrian Ross
• Arthur Benson
• Robert Hugh Benson
• E.F. Benson
• E.G. Swain
• Ingulphus (Arthur Gray)
• H. Russell Wakefield
• R.H. Malden
• M.P. Dare
• Andrew Caldecott
• L.T.C Rolt
• A.N.L Munby
• Christopher Woodforde
• Noel Boston

This episode Mike and Will grab their guidebook, pack their bucket and spade and head off for a terrifying trip to sunny Cornwall in E.F. Benson’s ‘Negotium Perambulans’.

Big thanks to Richard Crowest of the ‘Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson’ podcast for giving us permission to use extracts from his reading of this story in the episode. You can find out more about Richard, including his E.F. Benson and ‘Short Stories by Saki’ podcasts, at www.corvidae.co.uk.

Show notes:

• E.F. Benson (wikipedia)
  Wikipedia has a good summary of E.F. Benson’s life, including links to information on his fascinating family.
• Life of E.F. Benson by Brian Masters (AbeBooks.co.uk)
  Brian Masters’ excellent biography of Benson is a must-read for those interested in learning more about Benson.
• Visible and Invisible by E.F. Benson (isfdb.com)
  Negotium Perambulans originally appeared in Hutchinson’s magazine, and was later anthologised in this volume, along side such other Benson classics as ‘And the dead spake…’ and ‘The Horror Horn’.
• ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Something-or-Other: E.F. Benson’s “Negotium Perambulans”’ (tor.com)
  This article contains some interesting insights into this story and its the influence it may have had on H.P. Lovecraft.
• ‘Negotium Perambulans’ by Loneanimator (deviantart.com)
  This illustration from Loneanimator does a great job of capturing the horrifying climax of this story.

Seasons greetings listeners! For this special festive episode Mike and Will turn off the lights and dive into the wardrobe for a game of hide-and-shriek, courtesy of A.M. Burrage’s Christmas classic ‘Smee’!

Big thanks go to our reader this week Kirsty Woodfield.

Also mentioned in this episode were ‘The Dead Room’, the new Mark Gatiss ghost story due to air at 10pm on BBC4 this Christmas Eve. Also Robert Lloyd Parry, who is going to be live-streaming a performance of an M.R. James ghost story on Facebook this Christmas Eve at 7pm.

Last but not least, don’t forget to test your M.R. James knowledge with Monty’s Quiz, our brand new (and 100% free) quiz game with over 300 M.R. James-based multiple-choice questions!

Show notes

• A.M. Burrage (wikipedia)
  
• Smee by A.M. Burrage (original version)
  The easiest way to get hold of the original/full version of this story is to shell out for the ebook from Burrage Publishing.
• Smee by A.M. Burrage (abridged version)
  This is the abridged (and free-to-read) version of ‘Smee’ that seems to be doing the rounds online, masquerading as the original story. We believe it has it’s origins as a simplified version of the story intended for those learning English as a foreign language!
• Who was A.M. Burrage? (greatwarfiction.wordpress.com)
  This biographical essay focuses on Burrages life rather than his ghost stories, but features a wealth of information about the man himself.
• A Review of Smee (booksofdaniel.com)
  This interesting essay explored how ‘Smee’ fits in to the wider tradition of Christmas ghost stories.
• A Game of Bear by M.R. James (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The framing of ‘Smee’ bears (ahem) similarities to an unfinished M.R. James story draft, which also makes reference to the hidden terrors lurking in party games that “entail stealthy creepings up and down staircases and along passages, and being leapt upon from doorways with loud and hideous cries.”
• Deadly Game or Hide and Seek (seeksghosts.blogspot.com)
  This blog post explored the ‘Mistletoe Bough’, a classic German ghost story dating back to the early 19th century which features an unfortunate bride whose wedding day game of hide and seek turns deadly! The story inspired one of the first celluloid Christmas ghost stories in 1904.

Textaphobes beware!  This month Will and Mike tackle Henrietta Dorothy Everett’s “The Death Mask”, a supernatural farce about termagant wives, gold diggin’ husbands and menacing fabrics.

Story notes:

• Monty writes,“Going back a few years I light on Mrs Everett’s The Death Mask, of a rather quieter tone on the whole, but with some excellently conceived stories.” ( Some Remarks on Ghost Stories, The Bookman, 1929).  We had our pick of stories from this collection and of course went with the titular (and best) tale.
• Mrs Everett wrote most of her work under the pseudonym of Theo Douglas, though the anthology ‘The Death-mask’ was published under her own name just three years before her death in 1923, aged 72.  We struggled to find much about Mrs E. online, but did reconstruct her family tree and found out about the tragic and horribly noteworthy death of her Grandfather’s brother!
• That said, we did find that there is a bundle of papers regarding Mrs Everett’s family, together with that of her husband, at the Naval archives in Greenwich.  Material for a potential thesis? We’d love to know more about her.
• There’s a good wikipedia article on the complex set of rules that developed around mourning in the Victorian era. It seems like the mourning expectations for women were more arduous than for men, with women being expected to be in mourning for a husband for 1-4 years, while men got away with mourning for a wife for just 3-5 months! By these standings, Tom has done his fair share.
• The picture above  is the death mask of Grace, Lady Manners of Derbyshire, recorded for posterity after her death.  Photo credit to David Brierley.

This episode it’s conference report time! We’ve just returned from Through a Glass Darkly, an M.R. James conference which brought together authors, academics and fans in ghost-haunted York for a 2-day Jamesfest of epic proportions!

The episode features interviews with:

• Conference organisers Paul M. Chapman, Theresa Dudley and Mark Jones, who told us about how the chance discovery that M.R. James visited York in 1898 sparked the inspiration for the conference.
• Writer and regular Ghosts and Scholars contributor Mark Valentine, who presented on M.R. James’s scholar protagonist and what they tell us about James, his life and audience.
• Writer John Reppion, who had just presented on the challenges of adapting ‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’ for the graphic novel form.
• Author Helen Grant, who presented the fascinating true story of Father Reinhardt, the Steinfeld monk who travelled to England to view Steinfeld’s missing stained glass windows, the whereabouts of which was revealed in ‘The Treasure of Abbott Thomas’.
• Professor Darryl Jones, who told us about his exciting plans for the first full-blown M.R. James biography for over 30 years!

The podcast also features Will and Mike’s thoughts on the rest of the conference, including walking in the footsteps of M.R. James for a stained glass tour of two York churches, and performances from Robert Lloyd Parry and Patrick Smith. You can learn more about all the people we mention at the Friends of Count Magnus website.

This month Mike and Will throw caution to the wind and make an ill-fated wish on “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs.  Best known in his own time for gentle tales of the sea and other comic stories, Jacobs is now perhaps most famous for this classic cautionary tale of cursed taxidermy, family tragedy and pant-wetting zombie horror.  And following the show there’s a bonus fanboy smack-down between Mike and Will, as they try to emulate a listener’s M.R. James game show triumph on TV’s “Mastermind” in 1981. Come for the monkey, stay for the quiz!

Show notes:

• Our amazing reader this month was singer and songwriter Patrick Walker of the band 40 Watt Sun.  We hope you enjoy his readings and that he’ll join us again in the future!
• Our picture credit is to artist Noah Weaver.  You can find this picture and others at his gallery.
• William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) lived through the same period as M.R. James, though we don’t think their paths ever crossed. His story is probably the most famous story we’re covering in this series and there is a wikipedia page dedicated to the many adaptations and spoofs of his plot, including the Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror II in 1991.
• We drew extensively from M. Grant Kellermeyer’s notes on the story in his excellent edited edition of W.W. Jacob’s stories (available from Oldstyle Tales Press) and the very useful SparkNotes for this story.
• Will enjoyed tracking down the origins of the three wishes plot. Professor D. L. Ashliman’s website has a number of examples, including a NSFW version from ‘The Thousand and One Arabian Nights’ (hint: it’s probably big enough already) and a classic European folk tale of a man who transforms his wife’s nose into a sausage.
• If you’d like to hear from a protagonist who deals with the consequences of being offered three wishes with slightly more sense and wisdom then check out ‘The Third Wish’, a rather touching story by ‘The Wolves of Willoughby Chase’ author Joan Aiken.
• You can hear ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ introduced by author David Mitchell (who calls it ‘one of the most perfect ghost stories ever written’) and then read by Ben Hicks. Mitchell says of the story, “It’s a puzzle, it’s a trap, it’s a dare, it’s a flippant joke from Edwardian England that gets bent out of shape by esoteric India.”
• Head over to Friends of Count Magnus to find out more about the M.R. James conference that is taking place in York later this month – tickets may still be available!
• Finally, listeners from outside of the UK might not know that Mastermind is a famous gameshow here, consisting of a general knowledge round and questions on a topic chosen by each contestant. The life and stories of M.R. James occasionally comes up as specialist subject, including as selected by listener Colin H in 1991 and most recently (we think) by comedian John Finnemore on Celebrity Mastermind in 2016.

This episode Mike and Will return to the realms of the ‘psychic detective’ in this tale from mother-son writing team Kate and Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard. Expect terror on the moors with malevolent earth spirits, coughing ghosts, ominous otters and even a bicycle chase scene!

A big thanks to Rob Douglas, who provided the readings for this episode.

Head over to Friends of Count Magnus to find out more about the M.R. James conference that is taking place in York this September!

Story notes

• Hesketh Hesketh-Pritchard (Wikipedia)
  Wikipedia provides a decent summary of Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard’s eclectic life.
• Flaxman Low, Occult Psychologist, Collected Stories (Project Guttenberg Australia)
  You can read this story and a selection of other Flaxman Low tales for free online at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• Flaxman Low: The First Psychic Detective (interestingliterature.com)
  A nice summary of Flaxman Low and other ‘psychic detective’ characters in Victorian and Edwardian fiction.
• Haunted Holidays: The Terrible Occult Detectives (Tor.com)
  This highly entertaining article by Grady Hendrix pulls apart and lampoons the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including examples such as Dr. Hesselius, Dr. John Silence and Flaxman Low.
• Who ya gonna call? Ghost doctor, ghost-finder or ghost-seer? (Skulls in the Stars)
  This blog post also talks about the phenomenon of the ‘psychic detective’ character in fiction, including a Top Trumps-esque breakdown the the more famous psychic detective characters along with their skill-sets and character defects.
• Will-o’-the-wisp (Wikipedia)
  In this episode we discuss whether the haunting could be related to or inspired by the natural (or supernatural?) phenomena of the ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ or ‘ghost light’.

Have you ever had a hankering for upping sticks and moving overseas, where one’s limited means might stretch a little further and the wine flow more freely? This week Will and Mike head for the north coast of France in Featherston’s Story, where Mrs Henry Wood shows us that expat life is not always baguettes, brie and “la bonne vie”…

Show notes:

• MR James wrote in ‘Some Remarks on Ghost Stories” that “I own to reading not infrequently ‘Featherston’s Story’ in the fifth series of Johnny Ludlow, to delighting in its domestic flavour and finding its ghost very convincing. (Johnny Ludlow, some young persons may not know, is by Mrs Henry Wood)”.
• Mrs Henry Wood (or Ellen) began to published her Johnny Ludlow supernatural tales in 1868.  She did so anonymously (or rather under the name ‘Johnny Ludlow’) in ‘The Argosy’, a magazine that she had taken over editorship of the year before. The website mrshenrywood.co.uk is a fantastic resource if you would like to find out more about her prolific writing career.
• Ellen Wood admitted the stories were written by herself in the introduction to the first Johnny Ludlow anthology, published in 1880. She claimed that she wrote them under a pseudonym because using her own name would have destroyed the illusion that they were true accounts of things that happened to the male protagonist.
• The Ludlow stories are quite well known today for their supernatural content, but the paranormal only featured in a small number of the Ludlow stories.  These were more commonly crime, adventure or romance stories (of the 80 individually named Ludlow stories, only 17 feature the supernatural).  They were packed full of characters,  perhaps over a thousand in total.
• Featherston’s Story was published after Ellen Wood’s death and is one of the last of the Johnny Ludlow tales. There’s a full list of Ludlow stories online, with a very brief summary of themes for each.

Ho ho ho! We have a festive cracker of an episode for you this month (literally), as Mike and Will explore Sir Andrew Caldecott’s M.R. James-inspired tale, ‘Christmas Re-union‘.

A big thank you to Tony Mears, who provided the readings for this episode. Check out his bands new track ‘A Hypothermia Banquet‘ on Bandcamp!

Story notes:

• ‘Christmas Re-union’ by Sir Andrew Caldecott (gutenberg.net.au)
  The collection in which this story appears can be read online at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• Sir Andrew Caldecott (wikipedia)
  Andrew Caldecott was a big cheese in the Colonial Office for much of this life, only starting to publish ghost stories after he retired. You can find out more about his career at britishempire.co.uk.
• Stories I Have Tried to Write by M.R. James (mrjamespodcast.com)
  Not familiar with the M.R. James essay from which Caldecott took his inspiration for this story? We put out a full reading of it back in 2011 which you can listen to online!
• Ghost story reviews: Not Exactly Ghosts (Tychy)
  An interesting review and commentary on the volume in which this story appears.
• Christmas Re-union (Anibalan.com)
  An essay on this story, and on Sir Andrew Caldecott in general.
• The Great Smog of London (wikipedia)
  The characters express a lot of concern about fog in this story. When you read about the Great Smog of December 1952 you will understand why!
• Sir Roger de Coverley (wikipedia)
  This famous country dance, mentioned in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, also makes an appearance in this story.

Mike and Will take a cruise across the pond in the good ship Kamchatka – but who’s hiding in The Upper Berth?  Joining us to narrate F. Marion Crawford’s classic tale is reader Rupert Simons, who tells us that he’s found a cheap cabin for his trip from The Hook to Harwich next week…

Show notes:

• F. Marion Crawford was a very successful writer who penned comparatively few ghost stories and as chiefly known for his historical novels.
• The Upper Berth was originally published in “The Broken Shaft: Tales in Mid-Ocean”, an anthology of tales told by passengers on a stranded ocean liner.  Friend of the show Dewi Evans (whom we interviewed at JamesCon in Episode 51) has written an excellent post about this collection on his blog.
• Ruthanna Emrys and Anne Pillsworth have written an excellent essay on this story, mentioned in our show.  Anne suggests that “Bertie” is the ghost of a man who justs wants the bed for which he paid!
• There is a short film adaptation of ‘The Upper Berth’ by Mansfield Dark. You can watch it online but it’s also available as an extra on the DVD ‘The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance’.
• Our fabulous cover art came from illustrator and designer Mike Godwin, whose website is full of wonderful things and links to his Etsy shop.

This episode join Mike and Will as they don their kilts and sporrans and head north of Hadrian’s wall for some Scottish horror (no, not the midges) as we explore ‘The Open Door’ by Margaret Oliphant!

Big thanks to Kirsty for chilling us to the bone with her readings for this episode.

Show notes:

• Margaret Oliphant (Wikipedia)
  Margaret Oliphant (1828 – 1897) was a prolific and very popular author in her day, and M.R. James describes ‘The Open Door’ as one of only two ‘… really good ghost stories I know in the language wherein the elements of beauty and pity dominate terror.’
• Colinton House, Edinburgh (oliphantfiction.com)
  ‘Brentwood house’ in the story was mostly likely inspired by this house, where Oliphant stayed on a number of occasions as the guest of her friend William Blackwood III, publisher of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in which this story was first published. The house, now a school, features a picturesque castle ruin in the grounds, complete with open doorways leading to nowhere.
• Lasswade, near Edinburgh (Leedstrinity.ac.uk)
  While the house in the story is almost certainly based on Colinton House, the adjoining village of Brentwood is more likely to be based on the village of Lasswade, where Oliphant grew up. Like Lasswade, the village in the story is described as being a centre for paper-making. This article by Rosemary Mitchell also provides some fascinating analysis of the religious symbolism in the story.
• Margaret Oliphant and the Romantic Novel (dangerouswomenproject.org)
  This essay by Laura Witz, subtitled ‘Subtle subversions of Victorian gender conventions’, argues that Oliphant was a feminist whose fiction struggled against the restrictive gender norms of the time. Not that you see much of that in ‘The Open Door’, sadly.
• The Margaret Oliphant Fiction Collection (oliphantfiction.com)
  This website contains not only a bibliography of Oliphant, but also plot synopsis for all her published fiction. The ‘Stories of the Seen and the Unseen‘ section will be of particular interest to fans of the ghost story.
• Bogle (Wikipedia)
  A ‘bogle’ is a uniquely Scottish ghost of folkloric creature, one which the stable-master Jarvis is particularly keen to insist he is not afraid of in this story!
• Mass Hysteria (Wikipedia)
  The doctor is keen to attribute the multiple ghostly sightings as an example of mass hysteria. The wikipedia page on mass hysteria  contains some fascinating examples of this, from mewing nuns in the middle ages to modern forms of viral mass hysteria reportedly spread by the internet.

We’re back! This week Mike and Will descend gingerly into a gloomy railway cutting to investigate Charles Dickens’ The Signal-Man.  Dickens dissects the harsh realities of life in industrial Britain, but can he also deliver a pleasing terror and a locomotive-sized Jamesian Wallop? (spoiler: yes, in spades)

Show notes:

• Higham Station was the closest to Dickens’ home at Gads Hill Place and he’d have had plenty of time to contemplate it’s formidable tunnel.
• Fatal crashes and accidents were by no means rare in the early days of the railways.  Dickens was himself involved in a hideous rail crash while in the company of his mistress and her mother, as memorialised in the picture above.  Mike mentioned hearing about the Thirsk rail disaster on the excellent podcast Note to Self – he didn’t, but admits it was actually on a lecture about sleep on BBC Radio 3.
• An approachable essay on Dickens and the Trauma of Technology, which covers some of the main themes of the story.
• Oldstyle Tales Press have released a wonderful edition of Dickens’ ghost stories with great footnotes and illustrations (disclaimer – we were kindly sent a couple of free copies by the lovely editor, Michael Grant Kellermeyer).
• Another slim edition worth getting hold of is by Profile Books, which includes the incredibly funny story The Boy At Mugby Junction – I would like to say that railway catering has improved in the UK, but it’s only by degrees.
• And of course, please check out the BFI Ghost Story for Christmas DVD, including LGC’s dramatisation of the Signal-Man.
• Huge thanks to our reader this week, Mike’s very own father in law… Mike.  Yes, it gets confusing.

Finally, a huge apology from me (Mike) for the delay in getting this out –  we ain’t dead yet!

This episode Mike and Will cover ‘The Haunted and the Haunters‘ by Charles Dickens’s BFF, Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

M.R. James considered this story essential reading, saying “Nobody is permitted to write about ghost stories without
mentioning ‘The Haunted and the Haunters’.” (Some Remarks on Ghost Stories). Will it live up to our expectations?

Our reader for this episode is talented artist and family member, Peter Ross!

We also mention the new book from friend-of-the-podcast Patrick J. Murphy, Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M. R. James, check it out!

Show notes:

• Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Wikipedia)
  Some basic biographical details about EBL’s life. A more detailed biography can be found at
  www.victorianweb.org.
• Edward Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (www.bulwer-lytton.com)
  Inspired by EBL’s famous clunker “It was a dark and stormy night…”, this competition challenges would-be writers
  to come up with the worst possible opening line to a novel!
• 50 Berkeley Square, London (Wikipedia)
  Often touted as ‘the most haunted house in England’, this place gained a fearsome reputation for ghostliness in the
  latter half of the 19th century. It’s description and locations are tantilisingly close to the house described in
  this story, although the story pre-dated the house’s notoriety.
• The Haunted House (Wikipedia)
  The ‘haunted house’ as a concept goes back for at least 2000 years, and has inspired writers for just as long.
• ‘The Haunted House’ by Charles Dickens et al (Wikipedia)
  Could the publication of this story be connected in any way to the publications of ‘The Haunted House’, the
  portmaneau story that was ‘conducted’ and published by EBL’s friend Charles Dickens in the same year that EBL’s
  story was published?
• Essay by Ellis Jordan (www.cherylblakeprice.com)
  This essay on ‘The Haunted and the Haunters’ sheds some more light onto the story and EBL’s aims in writing it. It
  also compared the two differing versions of the story that were published.

Illustration by M. Grant Kellermeyer

In this bumper episode we examine M.R. James’s favourite story by his favourite author, ‘The Familiar’ by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu! Praise doesn’t get much higher than that, but is it all it is cracked up to be? If you are a fan of owls, diminutive, angry men in fur caps and incredibly long sentences, then you are in for a treat.

This episode also features an interview with noted Le Fanu expert Brian J Showers of Swan River Press and readings by Debbie Wedge.

This episodes artwork comes curtesy of M. Grant Kellermeyer of Oldstyle Tales Press.

Story notes

• Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (Wikipedia)
  Some biographical information on the man himself.
• ‘In a glass darkly’ by Le Fanu (Wikipedia)
  This is the volume of ghost stories in which this story most famously appears, featuring the ‘occult detective’ Dr. Martin Hesselius.
• M.R. James on J. S. Le Fanu (Ghosts and Scholars)
  An article based on the presentation on Le Fanu that M.R. James gave to the Royal Institution of Great Britain on March 16th, 1923.
• Haunted Holidays – The Terrible Occult Detectives (Tor.com)
  A very amusing essay on the ‘occult detective’ in literature, which singles out Le Fanu’s Dr Hesselius as the first occult detective.
• Reminiscences of a bachelor by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Swan River Press)
  We mention this title in our interview with Brian J. Showers. The book features ‘The Watcher’ and other stories, as well as its original companion piece ‘The Fatal Bride’ and notes on both stories.

Also mentioned in this episode

• Monsters – Don’t treat them gently! (Pleasing Terror Games)
  The new M.R. James board game from friend of the show, James Drewitt.
• ‘No Diggin ‘ere’ and ‘Barchestering’ T-shirts (redbubble.com)
  Two new MRJ T-shirts from our regular reader Debbie Wedge! Also available as baby-grows, mugs, phone cases etc.

Émile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

This episode Mike and Will pop across the channel for some booze-heavy French/German shinanigans in ‘The White and the Black’ by Erckmann-Chartrian.

M.R. James says this writing partnership “produced some quite first-class romances”, but this tale of murder and mayhem is no love story!

Show notes:

• Erckmann-Chatrian (Wikipedia)
  About the authors
• Breisach, Germany (Wikipedia)
  About the town in which the story is set. Also, take a look on Google Maps.
• ‘Buried Treasure’ by Erckmann-Chatrian (Archive.org)
  This public domain scan of an Erckmann-Chatrian anthology contains a number of translations of their short stories, including ‘The White and the Black’ (albeit in a very different translation to the version we cover in the podcast).
• Anabaptism (Wikipedia)

The following also get a mention in this episode:

• Nunkie Theatre (nunkie.co.uk)
  Robert Lloyd Parry is releasing another of his excellent M.R. James performances as a pay-to-stream release before Christmas.
• Haunted Advent Calendar (moorereppion.com)
  To entertain lovers of the strange and horrible over the festive season, authors Leah Moore and John Reppion have produced this highly enjoyable advent calendar, packed with weird and horrifying tit-bits.

Happy Halloween listeners! In this bumper-bonus episode we talk about our first non-M.R. James ghost story, ‘A Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal‘, a fascinating early ghost story attributed to Daniel Defoe.

We also interview Leah Moore and John Reppion about their recently-published graphic novel of ‘Ghost stories of an Antiquary‘.

Finally, we are delighted to announce the publication of our new ebook, ‘Stories that inspired M.R. James‘, which features the next twelve stories we will be covering on the podcast and which is available to purchase right now!

Phew, what an episode!

Show notes:

• ‘The Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal’ (Wikipedia)
• Daniel Defoe (Wikipedia)
• Literacy rates in the 17th Century (UMassD)
• Charles Drelincourt (Wikipedia)
• ‘Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions’ by Daniel Defoe (Archive.org)
• List of other works on the supernatural by Daniel Defoe (indiana.edu)
• ‘Defoe’s Spirits, Apparitions and the Occult’ by Maximillian Novak (illinoisstate.edu)
• ‘Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century’ By Sasha Handley (books.google.co.uk)

Nearly five years to the day that we released Episode 1, we are pleased to bring you ‘A Vignette’, M.R. James’s very last story!

The episode also features readings from Robert Lloyd Parry and an exciting announcement about the future of the podcast!

Show notes:

• A Vignette by M.R. James (adelaide.edu.au)
• A Vignette, read by Scott Wichmann (Soundcloud)
• The Rectory, Great Livermere (Monty’s World)
• The House by the Churchyard by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Wikipedia)
• A Pleasant Terror: The Life and Ghost of M.R. James (1995 Anglia Television)
• Great Livermere: A parish with ghosts by Beryl Rosalind Dyson (Amazon)
• Images of Livermere Hall (demolished in 1923)
• Photos of ‘Livermere Hall’ (actually the Rectory, Flickr)

In this epic feature-length James-fest, Mike and Will conclude their coverage of ‘Eton and King’s’, M.R. James’s memoir of a life spent in two of the UK’s most celebrated educational institutions.

This part covers M.R. James’s time as an undergraduate, Fellow, Dean and Provost at King’s College, his somewhat unhappy stint as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, and his final return to Eton as Provost.

Our reader for this episode was Peter Ross, thanks pa!

Image is M.R. James in Westmorland, in 1903 (aged about 40).

Show notes:

• Oscar Browning (wikipedia)
• Henry Bradshaw (wikipedia)
• Fitzwilliam Museum (wikipedia)
• King’s College, Cambridge (kings.cam.ac.uk)

This episode Mike and Will interview folklorist Jacqueline Simpson about the influence of Scandinavian and English folklore on M.R. James’s ghost stories, as well as Jacqueline’s collaboration with Terry Pratchett on ‘Folklore of the Discworld’.

Many thanks to Jacqueline for her hospitality!

More about Jacqueline:

• Jacqueline Simpson on Wikipedia
• Dictionary of English Folklore by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud
• Folklore of Sussex by Jacqueline Simpson
• Green Men & White Swans by Jacqueline Simpson
• The Lore of the Land by Jacqueline Simpson and Jennifer Beatrice Westwood
• Folklore of the Discworld by Jacqueline Simpson and Terry Pratchett

Also:

• Evald Tang Kristensen on Wikipedia

It’s back to school this week as Mike and Will pack their tuckboxes and top hats and join Monty for the first part of his memoir “Eton and King’s: recollections, mostly trivial”.  How will James deal with the traditions and quirks of Eton?  Will he avoid a midnight wedgy?  And who exactly is the mysterious Goat Sucker?

Links:

• Eton and King’s is readily available from Ash Tree Press as an ebook.
• Mike and Will at Temple Grove School (it’s changed a bit since Monty’s day).  More on his prep school in our episode on “A School Story“.
• A glossary of Eton terms, for the initiated.
• HE Luxmoore was an Eton master for 44 years.  He was MRJ’s tutor and perhaps the biggest influence on him besides his father.
• Our cover art by, of course, Alistair Wood  – do have a look at his new website!

This episode Mike and Will report on the the M.R. James conference, aka ‘Haunted Studies: The Ghost Stories of M.R. James’ and bring you interviews with a range of Jamesian luminaries present at the event.

For more information on the conference, visit the conference website.

People we interview in this episode:

• Dewi Evans (Acedemia.edu)
  Dewi, along with Jane Mainley-Piddock, organised the conference. You can read more from Dewi at his blog, or follow him on Twitter.
• Ruth Harris
  Ruth impressed us with her paper  ‘”If I’m not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!”: M.R. James and the Academic Nightmare’
• Ramsey Campbell (ramseycampbell.com)
  As England’s most celebrated living horror author, Ramsey Campbell needs little introduction. His opening keynote ‘M.R. James and the Ghost Story Tradition’ got the conference off to a flying start.
• Steve Manthorp (manthorp.co.uk)
  Steve was at the conference exhibiting his fascinating full-size dolls house based on ‘The Haunted Doll’s House’ by M.R. James. You can find our more about Steve at his website and at ADEPT.
• Dr Andrew Smith (shef.ac.uk)
  Andrew is Reader in Nineteenth Century English Literature at the University of Sheffield, and provided the day’s final keynote on ‘M.R. James and the Ghosts of World War 1’.
• Richard Mansfield (mansfielddark.com)
  Richard is one half of Mansfield Dark, who have been impressing us for a number of years with their haunting shadow puppet films of M.R. James stories, two of which were shown at the conference. Find out more about these at their website.

This episode Mike and Will pack their sleeping bags and bed down for ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’ by M.R. James.

The episode also features an exclusive interview with James Drewett and Richard Svensson, creators of ‘Monsters and Miscreants’ a new M.R. James-themed card game available to order now. You can also watch an unboxing video of the same game featuring your humble hosts, Will and Mike, recorded live in Will’s kitchen. The glamour!

About Monsters and Miscreants:

• Order your copy at pleasingterror.wordpress.com, or find out more at their Facebook page
• View more of Richard’s artwork at his website loneanimator.com, where you can also find some of his awesome M.R. James animated short films. Also check out Richard on DeviantArt.
• Props also go to Ivory Graphics, the company responsible for printing the card game.
• If you are curious about James’s other still-in-development M.R. James card game ‘Cards for the Curious’, watch this Youtube video to find out more.

Show notes:

• A Night in Kings College Chapel by M.R. James (Ghosts & Scholars)
  You can read the full text of this story at the ever-useful Ghosts & Scholars website.
• A Guide to the Windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge by M.R. James (Cambridge University Press)
  After writing this story M.R. James went on to write this book on the King’s College Chapel glass. It was published in 1899.
• The Medieval Stained Glass Photographic Archive (therosewindow.com)
  This website contains images of nearly all the stained glass mentioned in this story, including their locations within the chapel. More detailed text about the windows can also be found at vidimus.org, and this video from The Guardian explores the chapel.
• The Univeristy Pitt Club
  The final fragment of this story was found written on Pitt Club note paper, hinting at where James may have been sitting when he wrote it.
• ‘Dare to be a Daniel’ (Youtube)
  It is likely that this is the sort of thing James was afraid of when he makes his sniffy comments about ‘congregational singing’!
• Reuben and the well (Biblehub.com)
  Genesis 37:29 – the scene from the bible that Reuben is supposed to be representing in his window when ‘on duty’.
• Moses and the Manna from heaven (biblegateway.com)
  Exodus 16 – where the Manna comes from which the naughty children of Israel are throwing at Reuben in the story.
• Biblical typology (theopedia.com)
  When Reuben says “I may only be a type…” he is referring to this.
• The most misunderstood woman in the bible (todayschristianwoman.com)
  In this story Job’s wife is portrayed as an unsympathetic nagging tyrant, a traditional interpretation of her character. However, more modern minds have reassessed her character and come to a different conclusion.
• Window of opportunity (spectator.co.uk)
  During the episode Mike mentions the surprising story of how King’s College Chapel got it’s famous west window. This is it!

The windows themselves (mostly at therosewindow.com):

• Reuben
• Gathering the manna (or throwing the bread rolls)
• Naomi, she of the deceased and hen-pecked husband
• Job, tormented by demons (and his wife)
• Jonah and one crazy-ass looking whale
• Tobias and his mother
• And here’s the vicious dog

What could be more worthy of a Christmas episode than a ghost story? Answer: twelve ghost stories!  This week Mike and Will find plenty of seasonal cheer in the scribblings of a 15th century monk from Yorkshire, whose collected tales of wandering spirits Monty transcribed in 1922.  Expect lashings of purgatorial terrors, a stocking-full of redemption and a whole load of bad wassailing, ghostly and otherwise*, as we explore Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories.

Links:

• The Byland Abbey Project  has all the stories, plus translation notes and commentary on each story.  Invaluable!
• Ghosts in Medieval Yorkshire, by Jacqueline Simpson, is a fantastic article, not least for  Jacqueline’s analysis of the different roots of James’ ghost stories and these medieval tales.
• Mark Gatiss talks about medieval manuscripts with a curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum  in his 2013 documentary Ghostwriter (contains images some listeners will hopefully find disturbing).
• Death and the Afterlife – a British Library article with examples of medieval Books of Hours and other context for understanding the 15th century view of mortality, purgatory and salvation.
• Underrated BBC Radio 4 discussion show Beyond Belief (it’s great, even for atheists!) ran an episode on purgatory, which may not be available to listeners outside of the UK.

Happy Christmas and we’ll see  you again in 2016!

* no, seriously. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

This episode Mike and Will dust off their acting chops and take to the stage as they cover Auditor and Impresario, M.R. James’s little-know comic play! Expect diabolism, drama, demons and dreadful sub-GCSE-level acting!

The image to the right is none other than M.R. James himself, playing they the part of Peithetairos in an 1883 student production of Aristophanes’ The Birds at Cambridge. The play was performed in the original Greek, naturally!

Show notes:

• To our knowledge this play is currently only available in Ash Tree Press’s A Pleasing Terror. Currently only available in eBook form, but an essential purchase for any James fan in our opinion.
• This play is a parody of a student production of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlow. You can read the whole thing on Project Gutenburg.
• This play was not the only thing inspired by the 1906 student production of Dr Faustus. It inspired the formation of the Marlowe Dramatic Society, which is still going today.
• In this episode we ruminate on the connections between this play and Rupert Brooke, who starred in the production of Dr Faustus which preceded the writing of this play.
• One figure who looms large over this play is M.R. James’s very good friend J.W. Clarke. Clarke (or ‘J’ to his friends) was a prominent figure at Cambridge and a great supporter of the Amateur Dramatic Club.
• Rosemary Pardoe ponders the meaning of the seemingly-unrelated latin sentences which Mephistopheles spouts in this article on the Ghost and Scholars website.
• The Seven Hills and other Cambridge oddities are explained in this entertaining article.
• Gyp, and a whole range of other mysterious terms are explained in this article on the slang and jargon of Cambridge University. For a chuckle we recommend checking out the references to  ‘Great Court Run’, ‘Grad-bashing’, ‘Hill’, ‘Open scholarship’, ‘Punting’, ‘Sent down’, ‘Sex club’ and ‘Suicide sunday’.
• More details on James’s involvement with drama at Cambridge can be found in James’s Eton and Kings.

In this episode Mike and Will cover the concluding third of ‘The Five Jars‘, M.R. James’s little-read children’s book. Expect earwig racing, bat balls, dragons and horseshoe mayhem!

The readings for this episode once again come from the excellent Librevox audiobook of The Five Jars, read by Peter Yearsley.

Links:

• Iron in Folklore (Wikipedia)
• The wonderful world of mouse racing (Youtube)
• N or M? (Wikipedia)

Contemporary children’s novels with a similar touch of the weird:

• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
• The Midnight Folk by John Masefield
• Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

In this episode Mike and Will delve into the middle third of M.R. James’s ‘The Five Jars’ and encounter talking owls, two flavours of sinister old women, and all manner of supernatural trickery and tomfoolery!

Readings this week are once again extracted from Peter Yearsley’s excellent Librevox recording of this story, with added help from Debbie Wedge.

If you don’t have a copy of The Five Jars in your collection, you can read the whole thing online at Thin-Ghost.org.

Also, Letters to a Child, extracts from M.R. James’s highly entertaining correspondence with the young Sybil Cropper can be read online at the Ghosts & Scholars website.

This week, Will and Mike don their academic tweeds, gather their notes and ascend to the podium to bring you their conference report on MR James and the Modern Ghost Story.  Join us for 45 minutes of (un)learned comment, digressions and wild speculation – plus more expert commentary from author Helen Grant (@helengrantsays), comics writer John Reppion (@johnreppion) and horror expert Prof Darryl Jones, as well as conference organisers Jane Mainley-Piddock (@jmainpidd) and Jim Mussell (@jimmussell).

Show notes:

• If you didn’t go and want to see what you missed, here is the conference programme.
• Desperate for more from JamesCon?  Take a look at Jane, Jim and fellow organiser  Dewi Evans’s (@wonderwelsh) live tweets from the event.
• Here’s a cheesy photo of us with Helen, Jane and Darryl.  And another with John.  More of the same @mrjamespodcast.
• We loved the Leeds Library (@theleedslibrary)
• Finally – Chris’s amazing tattoo

This week Will and Mike explore the borders between psychedelia and twee when they crack open The Five Jars, Monty’s only novel.  Prepare yourself for enigmatic springs, helpful trees and cantankerous cats – and two very confused podcasters.

Show notes:

Parents beware – Will drops his guard and utters a foul-mouthed profanity at 12:48.  Chapter one was a real struggle at times.

The full text of the Five Jars, courtesy of Thin Ghost.

We used Peter Yearsley’s Libravox recording of Five Jars for our readings this week, with sound editing by Will.

Alisdair Wood’s excellent illustration for The Five Jars also appears on this month’s Ghosts and Scholars Newsletter (subscribe!).  Why not check out Alisdair’s store?

If you’d like to see one of Robert Lloyd Parry’s performances in Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle, Cambridge or Hemmingford Grey Manor, do contact him directly.

And finally, did anyone else think of this when they heard about the bat?

In this episode Mike and Will batten down the hatches and prepare for the onslaught of ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects‘ by M.R. James.

Readings for this episode are taken from Curious Creatures, Robert Lloyd Parry’s excellent audiobook which features a selection of lesser-heard M.R. James stories. Many thanks to Robert for giving us permission to use them! The full CD can (and should) be purchased from nunkie.co.uk

Thanks to Alisdair Wood who provided the awesome artwork that accompanies this episode. Head over to woodi.co.uk for more M.R. James inspired artwork for sale.

Links

• The Malice of Inanimate Objects by M.R. James (Ghosts and Scholars)
  This story can be read in full online at the Ghosts and Scholars website. See the notes at the bottom for links to the various translations of the Brothers Grimm’s story about the unfortunate, or very wicked, Squire Korbes.
• Resistentialism and Animism (wikipedia)
  Think that objects are out to get you? You’re not alone, as Paul Jennings discussed in his humorous 1948 Spectator article on what he coined ‘Resistentialism‘. But attributing human attribute to non-human entities is nothing new, see this wikipedia article on Animism in religion.
• The Malice of Inanimate Objects short film (Youtube)
  Want to see a man crack an egg on his own face, and worse? This M.R. James short by Youtuber Alan OW Barnes takes it’s inspiration from M.R. James and the tale of Squire Korbes mentioned in this story.
• Death Bed: The Bed that Eats (Youtube)
  Cited as ‘a strong contender for worst movie ever made’, this 70’s horror movie caught Mike’s eye as example of the inanimate object idea being taken to places it probably shouldn’t. Warning: contains bad acting.

Season’s greetings listeners!

We have a Christmas bonus episode for you here, an exclusive readings of one of Charles Dickens’s supernatural Christmas tales ‘The Story of the Goblin who Stole a Sexton‘ which appeared as part of The Pickwick Papers in 1836.

For more information on Charles Dickens and M.R. James, check out Episode 41 in which we talk to M.R. James scholar Jane Mainley-Piddock.

Seasons greetings James fans! In this episode, Will and Mike take a further turn towards the Victorian by pairing up James with his great literary love, Mr Charles Dickens.  Just what influence did he have on James? Lest their amateur speculations take a less than academically rigorous turn, they are joined by James expert Jane Mainley Piddock (@jmainpidd), to tell us all about Monty’s strange fascination with Dickens’ unfinished tale, Edwin Drood.

Show notes:

• Jane’s website contains fascinating articles on MRJ and Edwin Drood, spiders, cats and much much more!
• Charles Dickens’ Ghost Stories: your hosts mentioned The Haunted House, The Trial for Murder and of course the Signal Man, available as a single download from Project Gutenburg.  The Signal Man was one of Lawrence Gordon Clarke’s best Ghost Stories for Christmas and is available in the BFI box set.
• Edwin Drood – do explore the mystery for yourself.  Our money is on Jasper having done it, or tried to do it, or… well, you decide! You can learn more about MRJ’s Drood-inspired tale “An Episode of Cathedral History” in episode 18.

And lest we forget, Will and Mike found time for Christmas gifts:

• Curious Warnings, the most sumptuous edition of MRJ’s tales currently  in print.
• Alisdair Wood’s (@alisdair_wood) illustrations have graced many an episode of the podcast and his MRJ postcards were one of the highlights of last year.  Will is particularly excited by his postcards of houses from horror movies.  The bloody envelope is a nice touch.
• The Christmas edition of Eerie (#6), published this month, came with an unsettling adaptation of the Ash Tree courtesy of Kelley Jones.  It also promises “sickening stories of festive phantoms and pernicious pastries”.  Available to buy as a download if you can’t make it to a comic shop.
• “I See A Shadow Coming – the Illustro Obscurum Yuletide Compendium Volume I”.  A lovely looking new zine, limited to 40 copies and now sadly SOLD OUT!  But do watch that space, they clearly have plans for more wierd fic wonderfulness in the coming year. Mike found the whole URL rather a tongue twister: just to clarify that it is yog-blogsoth.blogspot.com.
• AN Donaldson’s (@ANDauthor) new Lovecraft-meets-Solzhenitsyn novel Death Sentence, which will give you second thoughts about pining for snow this Christmas. If you haven’t already, do read Alisdair’s first novel Prospero’s Mirror, and listen to our interview with him from May last year.
• Helen Grant’s (@helengrantsays) new novel Silent Saturday will make you think twice about this newfangled interest in urban exploration.  You might also like Helen’s Jamesian novel The Glass Demon.  Helen joined us to discuss Marcilly-le-Hayer earlier this year.

This week Mike and Will attempt some foul necromancy with MR James’ little-known tale ‘The Experiment’.  Ghosts and Scholars described it as “weak and difficult” story: can your hosts revive it from the dead?

Story notes

• Rosemary and Daroll Pardoe’s invaluable notes, from Ghosts and Scholars
• Bishop Moore: a hardcore bibliophile after James’ own heart, his manuscript collection doubled the size of the Cambridge University Library when it was purchased in 1714.
• Was the murder of the rector of Rockland St Peter on Twelth Night in 1608 one of James’ inspirations for this story?
• Will and Mike also investigated some spooky goings on at Mill Hill Surgery: do check out the Halloween special of BBC soap Doctors before it disappears from iPlayer.

This episode Mike & Will false-start their way through the unfinished M.R. James manuscript ‘Merfield Hall’ (or should that be ‘Merfield House’?).

Big thanks to our reader this episode Debbie Wedge.

Show notes:

• ‘Merfield Hall’ manuscript (Ghosts & Scholars)
  What exists of the manuscript(s) for this story can be read online at the Ghosts & Scholars website.
• Potton, Bedfordshire (Wikipedia)
  Potton, mentioned in this story, is a real town in North East Bedfordshire.
• Fishing temple at Southill Park, Bedfordshire (bedfordshire.gov.uk)
  Could the fishing temple at Southill Park, Bedfordshire be an inspiration for the one mentioned in this story?
• Charles Cotton’s fishing temple (derbyshireuk.net)
  The most famous of all fishing temples, that made famous by Izaak Walton, author or ‘The Compleat Angler’.
• James Essex (Wikipedia)
  Architect of the gothic revival James Essex gets a mention in this story as having designed part of the titular house/hall.
• The Roxburghe Club (Roxburgheclub.org.uk)
  William Stedman in the story is said to have been a member of this most exclusive of clubs.

An episode of two parts this week.  In part one, Will and Mike open their box of James ephemera to play the “dreadful Game of Bear”.  We only have the opening pages of this unfinished tale, but fortunately three leading Jamesians have tried to finish the story. Big thanks to Kirsty Woodfield who returns to read for us this week.

In part two, we speak with Antonia Christophers and Noel Byrne of theatre company Box Tale Soup  about their brilliant new production of Casting the Runes.  They have just finished their run at the Edinburgh Fringe and will be in Cheltenham from 8-11 October.

Show notes:

• The Ghost and Scholars text of Game of Bear and Rosemary Pardoe’s notes can be found here.
• The stories written by Helen Grant, Jacqueline Simpson and Clive Wright were published in G&S Newsletter #15.  It’s now unavailable, but Rosemary has very kindly offered to send listeners a electronic copy if they get in touch by email.
• We didn’t get chance to talk about the amazing music in Box Tale Soup’s Casting the Runes, by musician Dan Melrose.
• Finally, picture credit. Not sure why the US military stores pictures of bears, but there you go.

This episode Mike & Will pack their tents, pull up their socks and strap on their woggles (woggles are a scout thing, right?) as they explore M.R. James’s ‘Wailing Well’!

Big thanks to Debbie Wedge for providing the readings for this episode.

Show notes:

• Worbarrow Bay
  This story was read to the Eton boy scout troop during a camping trip to Worbarrow Bay in Dorset. Today Worbarrow Bay is owned by the Ministry of Defense and is notable for being the location of the ghost village of Tyneham.
• Characters
  This story features a veritable who’s-who of Eton staff members from the period, including Headmaster Cyril Alington, Vice-Project Hugh V. Macnaghten, James himself and most prominently Eton’s Maths teacher and Scout Master William Hope Jones, who is most famous for writing the humorous song ‘National Anthem of the Ancient Britons‘ aka ‘The Woad Song’.
• The Scouts
  Will thinks that the antics of Stanley Judkins resemble those of Just William, but they remind Mike more of the scout troop in Moonrise Kingdom.
• Three women and a man
  Who are the mysterious haunters of the wailing well field? It is never revealed, but if the location is Worbarrow Bay in Dorset, then it is possible that the local gaol records suggests they may have been smugglers.
• The Wailing Well (short film)
  Film-makers Stephen Gray and David Lilley have committed this story to celluloid. You can watch it on Youtube in it’s entirety. Check out their other work at www.loonatikanddrinks.com
• Wayland Wood, Norfolk
  In his ‘Suffolk and Norfolk’ M.R. James mentions in passing that Wayland Wood near Thetford was known locally as ‘Wailing Wood’ on account of it’s supposedly dark past as the setting for the crimes which inspired ‘Babes in a Wood’.
• Of Three Girls and of their Talk by Derek John
  This story, a highly enjoyable Wailing Well prequel, appears in the sadly hard-to-find Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows.
• Dutch Oven
  The sort of ‘dutch oven’ referred to in the story is this and definitely not this.

This episode Mike & Will take a look at M.R. James’s East Anglian guidebook ‘Suffolk and Norfolk’. It’s got churches, lots and lots of churches, but also murder, mayhem, mermen, giants, green children and much more!

Show notes:

• Skeletons at Sparham (civitasperegrina.tumblr.com)
• Tom Hickathrift the Giant Killer (Wikipedia)
• Hill of Health, Wordwell (explorebritain.com)
• Miss M.H. James? (Ghosts & Scholars)
• William Dowsing (1596–1668) (Wikipedia)
• Good Sword of Winfarthing (norfolkchurches.co.uk)
• Orford Merman (hiddenengland.com.ar)
• Bogie Tales of East Anglia by M.H. James (Google Books)
• The Guide by Ramsey Campbell (darkfictionmagazine.co.uk)
• Warnings to the Curious (Don’t Go into the Cellar theatre)
• Casting the Runes (Box Tale Soup)
  

This episode Mike & Will tackle ‘Moose’ by M.R. James.

No wait, that’s not right. Ah yes, ‘Rats’ by M.R. James, that’s the one.

The episode features readings by Lewis Davies and the illustration to the right by Alisdair Wood.

Show notes:

• Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Charles Dickens (Project Gutenberg)
  The quote about rats which opens this story is from this story by Charles Dickens, which also contributions from Wilkie Collins among others. ‘Tom Tiddler’s Ground’ is also the name of an old children’s game.
• ‘Rats’ short film by Stephen Gray (Vimeo)
  This gorgeous-looking short film adaptation of ‘Rats’ is a real treat. If you want to learn more about the director, listen to our Interview with him in Episode 21.
• Orlando Whistlecraft (Flickr)
  The improbably-named Orlando Whistlecraft, mentioned in this story, was a ‘weather prophet and poet’ well known in the 19th Century for his yearly weather almanac.
• ‘Atmosphere and Crescendo: M.R. James, C.D. Heriot and the Mechanics of the Ghost Story’ by Tom Mullen (Ghosts & Scholars)
  We didn’t mention it in the episode, but this excellent essay examines how M.R. James and others use pace and rhythm to great effect in their ghost stories.
• Finally, if you are lamenting the lack of rats in ‘Rats’, here’s Master Splinter.

This episode Will and Mike are thrilled to be joined by top M.R. James scholar and author Helen Grant to help them struggle their way through unfinished M.R. James story fragment ‘Marcilly-le-Hayer‘.

Thanks to our readers this episode, Tom Hemmings and Debbie Wedge.

Show notes:

• Marcilly-le-Hayer map (Monty’s World)
  You can view the eponymous French town on our mapping app Monty’s World.
• Postcards of Marcilly-le-Hayer (www.famille-bretet.net)
  This website contains a great number of period postcards and photos of Marcilly-le-Hayer.
• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe  (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Rosemary Pardoe has provides some very useful notes on this story, including translations of the French passages.
• Places I have tried to visit: Marcilly-le-Hayer (Helen Grant)
  This is the excellent article that prompted us to invite Helen to be our co-host. First published in Ghosts & Scholars, this article describes Helen’s visit to Marcilly-le-Hayer and her search for the locations featured in the story.
• ‘Caroline de Litchfield’ by Donald Tumasonis (Ghosts & Scholars)
  In this article Tumasonis examines the real novel which James features in this story (albeit with a slightly mangled title!).
• M.R. James and France by Percy Lubbock (Google books)
  Percy Lubbock’s all-to breif memoir of M.R. James features some revealing and entertaining insights into some of James’ many holidays in France.
• Stories I have tried to write by M.R. James (The Albion Chronicles)
  In his essay ‘Stories I have tried to write’ M.R. James describes various stories which never reached publication, including one which is unmistakably ‘Marcilly-le-Hayer’.
• A Whisper in the Ear by Sheila Hodgson (Youtube)
  Between 1976 and 1992 Sheila Hodgson wrote a number of stories for radio which were inspired by the stories mentioned in M.R. James’ essay ‘Stories I have tried to write’. This one is based on the fragment of ‘Marcilly-e-Hayer’ mentioned in that essay. The others can be purchases in ebook form.

In this special Christmas Bonus episode, Mike and Will give their thoughts on Mark Gatiss’ adaptation of ‘The Tractate Middoth’ by M.R. James, which aired on UK TV last night along with Gatiss’ documentary ‘M.R. James: Ghost Writer’.

Please note that this episode contains spoilers about both programmes so if you are planning on watching either then make sure you do so before listening to this episode!

Hats off to Mr Gatiss for providing us with a thoroughly enjoyable evening’s entertainment!

If you want to learn more about the original story then look no further than our own Episode 11 which examined The Tractate Middoth in detail.

Finally, if you enjoyed Robert Lloyd Parry’s bravura performance as M.R. James in the documentary, don’t forget to check out his tour dates or buy a dvd over at his website nunkie.co.uk.

In this semi-Christmas episode, Mike and Will don their druid costumes and head down to rural Dorset for some pagan goings-on in ‘An Evening’s Entertainment‘ by M.R. James!

Big thanks to Paul Warren for providing the artwork to the right, titled ‘The Unsearchable Way (A Warning to the Curious)’. For more of Paul’s artwork visit Paul’s Website.

This episode also features readings from the talented Debbie Wedge. Thanks Debbie!

Show notes:

• An Evening’s Entertainment by Black Mass (Relic Radio)
  We have the Relic Radio podcast for resurrecting this classic 1964 radio version of this story. Hilariously over-the-top in places, and with some crazy accents. Check it out!
• Rosemary Pardoe story notes (Ghosts & Scholars)
  These G&S show notes were a great help when researching this story.
• “The Old Man on the Hill” – Beelzebub in “An Evening’s Entertainment” by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Pardoe has also written a very interesting analysis of the appearance of ‘lord of flies’ in this story.
• Just How Wicked was that Wicked Young Man? – A Look at “An Evening’s Entertainment” by Tina Rath (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Another excellent Ghosts & Scholars essay which tried to work out what is going on in this story.
• ‘Lucy and Harry’ books by Maria Edgeworth (Google Books)
  An example of the style of 19th century educational children’s book that James is parodying in style in this story.
• Cerne Abbas Giant (Wikipedia)
  The most likely ‘Old man on the hill’ is the Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset. Another (less priapic) possibility is the Long Man of Wilmington.
• Sun Cross (Wikipedia)
  The young man is found wearing a ‘little ornament like a wheel’, likely a sun cross.
• Lord of Flies (Wikipedia)
  The swarm of flies seen in this story is described by a local as ‘lord of flies’, a reference to the belief that beelzebub could manifest as a swarm of flies.

This episode concludes our coverage of M.R. James’s masterwork ‘A Warning to the Curious‘, and we also speak to James expert Patrick J. Murphy, whose essay ‘Lay of a Last Survivor – Beowulf, the Great War, and M.R. James’s “A Warning to the Curious”’ impressed us greatly when researching this story.

Lewis Davies returns again to lend his voice to the readings for this episode, and an excellent job he does too. Thanks Lewis!

Notes on Remembrance Day:

When we started our two-parter on Warning to the Curious, we didn’t realise that we’d be releasing the second part on Remembrance Day.

For all that M.R. James did to honour the memory of the war dead, it seems likely that his portrayal of the First World War in this story was intended to be  ambiguous, and likely coloured by  his role as mentor to students from Cambridge who were amongst the fallen.

Will and I are conscious that some might feel this as an insensitive topic for Armistice Day, and I am sure that M.R. James would have felt the same way.  But the podcast is ready, and I hope you agree that there is some merit in discussing how heavily the war weighed on James – as we remember those affected by war, in all conflicts.

Show notes:

• ‘Lay of a Last Survivor – Beowulf, the Great War, and M.R. James’s “A Warning to the Curious”’ by Patrick J Murphy and Fred Porcheddu (under review)
  Our intereviewee in this episode is co-author of this excellent essay. Patrick assures us he will let us know when it is published!
• ‘”No Thoroughfare” – The problem of Paxton’ by Mike Pincombe (Ghosts & Scholars 32)
  This fascinating article (sadly not available online) explores the implications of a wartime setting for ‘A Warning to the Curious’. For an entirely different take on the character of Paxton, see Pincombe’s very entertaining essay ‘Homosexual Panic and the English Ghost Story‘ (G&S Newsletter 2)!
• The Martello Tower, Aldeburgh (Landmark Trust)
  Fancy a holiday in a real-life M.R. James location? The Martello Tower at Aldeburgh where Paxton meets his death is now a holiday cottage! If you are not familiar with martello towers, you can learn more about this particular type of coastal defence on wikipedia.
• Beowulf (wikipedia)
  Patrick and Fred’s essay (see above) points out the glaring similatiries between this story and the most famous anglo-saxon story, Beowulf. Both stories feature theft from a burial mound with a guardian.
• A Warning to the Curious directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark (BBC TV 1972)
  Further details about the 1972 TV version of this story can be found on wikipedia, including differences between the TV version and the original story.
• A Playmobil Warning to the Curious (youtube)
  For a different take on the story, watch this playmobil animation of the story created by author and James-scholar Helen Grant and her son. It is both scary and cute in equal measures!
• A Warning to the Furious (BBC Radio Drama)
  Another highly entertaining riff on this story can be found in this BBC radio drama from Christmas 2007. A feminist film crew visit Aldeburgh to try and psychoanalyse M.R. James, but find they have bitten off more than they can chew! This drama is not currently available form the BBC but can be tracked down on the dark dingy corners of the internet with a bit of searching.
• Our visit to Aldeburgh (Flickr)
  You can see some photos of the visit we made this August to Aldeburgh, Suffolk on our Flickr account. Also see below for a video of out visit. Don’t forget you can view these locations on Monty’s World, our online mapping app.

The waiting is over, it’s finally time for Mike & Will to tackle what is arguably M.R. James’s masterpiece – A Warning to the Curious! It’s a biggie, so we will split our coverate of this story over two episodes. Our examination of this story will conclude in episode 31.

To assist them in their task, Mike and Will are joined by Tom Baynham, whose article ‘A Return to Seaburgh’ sheds much light on the real-world locations which feature in this story.

Once again big thanks go out to Alisdair Wood for providing the awesome artwork. You can now purchase a set of eight postcards featuring Alisdair’s great M.R. James illustrations. Snap them up while you can from Alisdair’s online shop.

The excellent readings which accompany this episode were provided by Lewis Davies.

Show notes:

• Story locations
  In his introduction to ‘Collected Ghost Stories’ M.R. James explained that he based the town of Seaburgh on Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The actual locations featured in this story have been explored in a few articles in Ghosts & Scholars: ‘A Visit to Seaburgh‘ by Darroll Pardoe (G&S 15), ‘Cambridge and Suffolk: A Perambulation of Two Counties’ by Brian J. Showers (G&S Newsletter 14 – not available online) and ‘A Return to Seaburgh’ by Tom Baynham (G&S Newsletter 23 – not available online). See also the White Lion Hotel. To see the locations features in this story on a map, visit Monty’s World, our M.R. James map.
• Snape Common Anglo-Saxon Cemetary (Wikipedia)
  The idea of buried Anglo-Saxon treasure was probably inspired by the real archeological finds uncovered at nearby Snape Common during the 19th century. The story also mentions the crown found at Rendlesham, a reference to the real crown found at the famous burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, near Rendlesham.
• ‘”No Thoroughfare” – The problem of Paxton’ by Mike Pincombe (Ghosts & Scholars 32)
  This fascinating article (sadly not available online) explores the implications of a wartime setting for ‘A Warning to the Curious’. For an entirely different take on the character of Paxton, see Pincombe’s very entertaining essay ‘Homosexual Panic and the English Ghost Story‘ (G&S Newsletter 2)!
• ‘Lay of a Last Survivor- Beowulf, the Great War, and M.R. James’s “A Warning to the Curious” ‘ by Patrick J. Murphy and Fred Porcheddhu (not yet published)
  This article reveals the connection between this story and Beowulf, and elaborates on Mike Pincombe’s suggestions about the importance of WWI to the understanding of this story.
• ‘”The Rules of Folklore” in the stories of M.R. James’ by Jacqueline Simpson (Warnings to the Curious, Hippocampus Press, 2007)
  This essay mentions various possible precedents to the myth of the Three Crowns, including the legend of Bran the Blessed and Drake’s Drum.
• The name ‘Ager’ (Surname Database)
  It seems that ‘Ager’ is indeed a local name of some pedigree in the Suffolk and Cambridge area.

As if a bumper 2-parter on ‘A Warning to the Curious’ wasn’t enough, we have also produced a short video comprising footage taken on our recent visit to Aldeburgh, and featuring locations from the story such as Aldeburgh Parish Church, the White Lion Hotel (‘the Bear’ from the story), Wyndham House (home of M.R. James’s grandparents), the Martello Tower, Sluice Cottage (the likely site of William Ager’s house) and even a spot which matches James’s description and location of the mound where Paxton finds the crown!

This episode Mike and Will whip out their podcasting binoculars and peer through them at ‘A View from a Hill by M.R. James.

This episode we are very lucky to have actor Scott Wichman (@scottwichmann) as our reader! Scott is starring as comedian George Burns in “Say Goodnight, Gracie” at the Virginia Rep later this month: do check that out if you can!  His co-producer Ryan Corbett – who wrote all the music and edited Scott’s readings – runs ‘Songwire‘ studios, in Richmond, VA.

Do check out our photos of the very spooky Coombe Gibbet on flickr.

Snow notes:

• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghost & Scholars)
  Where would we be without Rosemary Pardoe’s excellent story notes?
• The Herefordshire of ‘A View from a Hill’ by Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  If you are interested in knowing exactly where the titular hill is (and Gallows Hill of course!) then this excellent Ghosts & Scholars article has some answers.
• ‘A View from a Hill’ – 2005 BBC adaptation (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Ghosts & Scholars also has a review of the 2005 TV adaptation of this story. If you haven’t seen it you can find it in the BFI’s excellent ‘Ghost Stories for Christmas: The Definitive Collection‘ DVD box set.
• Fredrick Bligh Bond (Wikipedia)
  Some have speculated that the character of Baxter could be inspired by Fredrick Bligh Bond (1864 – 1945), and antiquary who made some impressive archaeological finds which he claimed were revealed to him by supernatural means!
• Dead Men’s Eyes blog (www.dead-mens-eyes.org)
  Taking inspiration from Baxter, this doctoral research project aims to mix augmented reality with heritage with the aim of allowing people to virtually ‘see into the past’. Interesting stuff!

This week we’ve got an interview for you with two splendid chaps from the U.S., who are delving into what lies behind MR James’ stories.

Patrick J. Murphy and Fred Porcheddu are also super-fun guys and we hope you enjoy hearing their take on what made Monty tick, the deeper meanings in his stories, and just what academics get up to in reading rooms all day.

If you aren’t sat on an academic network, then Fred has kindly offered to send interested listeners copies of these papers – follow the link for his email address.

Big thanks to Patrick and Fred for their time – we’ll be be back in a few weeks with View from a Hill.

In this episode, talking owls. Yes, you heard me correctly. Talking owls.

Has Monty completely lost his marbles? Mike and Will ask just that in this episode on ‘After Dark in the Playing Fields‘ by M.R. James.

Readings by kind permission of grand panjandrum and actor Robert Lloyd Parry!

The full reading of this story and many others can be found on Robert’s double-CD ‘Curious Creatures: The Shorter Horror of M.R. James‘ which is available to buy from nunkie.co.uk and is worth every penny.

Show notes:

• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The ever-reliable Rosemary Pardoe has produced a very useful set of notes on this story.
• Eton College, Windsor (various)
  The action in this story takes places in the playing fields of Eton College, Windsor, where M.R. James was provost when he wrote this story. The story features various locations in close proximity to each other .Monty meets the owl “not far from Sheep’s Bridge“, the owl is unceremoniously dumped in Fellow’s Pond before Monty eventually helps him climb into Bad Calx Tree.
• Eton Wall Game (etoncollege.com)
  In this episdoe Mike and Will mention the Eton Wall Game, one of the odd traditions unique to Eton College.
• A Midsummer Nights Dream (wikipedia)
  The mischievous sprites and fairies in this story are inspired by those in A Midsummer Nights Dream. The owl grumpily quotes “come not near out fairy Queen” from Act 2 Scene 2.
• The Five Jars by M.R. James (thin-ghost.org)
  This is not the only James story to feature talking animals, sprites and goblins. His novel for children ‘The Five Jars‘ is cut from very much the same cloth as this story.
• Daylight Saving Time (wikipedia)
  In this story and in ‘A Neighbours Landmark’ James refers to daylight saving time, a relatively new concept in M.R. James’s lifetime.
• Pathe News footage of Eton (BritishPathe.com)
  There is some fascinating early video footage of Eton College at the time James was provost on the British Pathe website, including videos of the Eton Wall Game, Eton Steeplechase and even possibly some footage of Monty himself!

In this episode Mike & Will don their funeral garb and shuffle mournfully into ‘There was a man dwelt by a churchyard‘ by M.R. James.

A big thanks to Robert Lloyd Parry for giving us permission to use readings extracted from his excellent CD ‘Curious Creatures: The Shorter Horror of M.R. James‘, available to purchase from his website nunkie.co.uk!

An equally big thanks go to Les Edwards for giving us permission to use his gorgeous artwork inspired by this very story, just one of the many illustrations Les did for the recent M.R. James collection ‘Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James‘. »

You can buy a print of this painting as well as many others from his website lesedwards.com

Show notes:

• A Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare (wikipedia)
  This title of this story comes from a line spoken by young Mamillius in Act 1 Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’. Our audio extract came from the BBC’s lovely Shakespeare Animated Tales version of the play, available to watch on YouTube.
• Brass rubbings at Oddington, Oxfordshire (White Winds Brass Rubbing)
  In this episode M.R. James refers to an ‘old brass in a church with a figure of a person in a shroud’. While it may not be the exact brass James was thinking of, the shrouded figure at Oddington Church is certainly of a similar kind to the one he refers to.
• Ghosts & Scholars story notes (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Rosemary Pardoe’s notes on this story throw some very helpful light on some of the more perplexing parts of this story.
• John Poole, playwright (wikipedia)
  We forgot to mention it in the episode, but it is likely that M.R. Jame’s choise of the name ‘John Poole’ is a nod towards the English playwright John Poole (1786–1872) who was famous for this Shakespeare parodies.
• “‘I seen it wive at me out of the winder’: The Window as Threshold in M.R. James’s Stories” by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter 4)
  This is the essay Will mentions in this episode which explores how James uses the window as a reoccuring feature of this ghost stories. Sadly the essay is not available to read online.
• Will-o-the-wisp or corpse lights (wikipedia)
  In this story the smith asks John Poole if he has ever seen any ‘lights’ in the churchyard. Rosemary Pardoe suggests that this is a reference to ‘corpse lights’.
• Ghosts & Scholars Survey (G&S)
  This story has an unenviable reputation for being voted one of the least popular M.R. James stories with readers of Ghosts & Scholars!

This episode it is the turn of ‘A Neighbour’s Landmark‘ by M.R. James to receive the critial going-over it deserves at the hands of Will and Mike.

Thanks to Kirsty for the excellent readings!

Show notes:

• ‘”They’ve got him! In the trees!” M.R. James and Sylvan Dread’ by Steve Duffy (Ghosts & Scholars)
• ‘So jarred were all my nerves’ : supernatural shock and traumatic terror in the ghost stories of M.R. James by Ralph Harrington (artificialhorizon.org)
• A close reading of M.R. James’ “A Neighbour’s Landmark.” by Tychy (tychy.wordpress.com)
• Myles Birket Foster and M.R. James (suptales.blogspot.co.uk)
• The interesting career of Lady Theodosia Ivy (roy25booth.blogspot.co.uk)
• The Lady Ivy’s Trial (in ‘Cobbett’s state trials’ – GoogleBooks)
• Possible locations: Betton Wood, Shropshire | Betton Strange Hall, Shropshire (Monty’s World)
• Glenfinlas; or, Lord Ronald’s Coronach by Sir Walter Scott (allpoetry.com)
• Warnings to the Curious, Ed. Rosemary Pardoe & S.T. Joshi (amazon.co.uk)
  Contains the essays by Jacquline Simpson and Brian Cowlishaw mentioned in this episode.

This episode Mike and Will speak to the author A.N. Donaldson, whose debut novel ‘Prospero’s Mirror‘ features M.R. James as the main protagonist!

In the novel M.R. James is summoned to Old College, Oxford to examine the inscription on an ancient mirror which may have belonged to the magician John Dee. Soon James finds himself sucked into a tangled web of science, sorcery and the supernatural which stretches back to 1665 when the Black Death came to Oxford…

“They live in two places, I suppose: in fever dreams and mirrors…  What is it?  This unutterable thing.  An abomination!”

The episode features readings by Alisdair himself.
The book can be purchased in paperback and ebook formats on Amazon.co.uk
For more information on Alisdair, visit his website at www.andonaldson.co.uk

This episode Mike & Will put on their golden pince-nez and crack the spine of ‘The Uncommon Prayer-book’ by M.R. James!

Big thanks go to our reader for this episode, Debbie Wedge.

Questions answered during this episode:

• Is M.R. James an anti-semite?
• Is Mr Poschwitz the Germanic Lovejoy?
• How much snakebite is too much snakebite?

Show notes:

• Michael Cox / Pleasing Terror story notes (amazon)
  M.R. James’ biographer Michael Cox has written some very useful notes for this story which can be found in the Oxford Classics edition of ‘Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories’. Another set of notes can be found in the ‘Pleasing Terror’ M.R. James anthology.
• ‘The Books, Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of Lady Anne Sadleir (1585-1670)’ by Arnold Hunt (Google Books)
  This essay features in the volume ‘Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium’ contains a wealth of information on the real life individual on who provided M.R. James with the inspiration of this story.
• Info on this story, Lady Sadleir and Anti-Cromwellian editions of the book of common prayer (Two Nerdy History Girls)
  Information often turns up in unexpected places, like here in the comments section of a competely unrelated article about Guy Fawkes! Scroll down to the thread of comments starting with Chris Woodyard for some interesting speculation on the inspiration for this story.
• Stereotypes of Jews in Literature (Wikipedia)
  Anti-Semitism has been rearing it’s ugly head in literature for centuries. Was M.R. James jumping on the Hebrew-bashing bandwagon? We think not but this info on how Jews have been portrayed in literature over the years is certainly eye-opening.
• “M.R. James, Antiquarian Sleuth: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth and the Blood Libel” by Steve Duffy (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This excellent article goes a long way to debunk the suggestion that M.R. James was harbouring anti-semitic tendencies by discussing James’ work to debunk the ‘Blood libel’ myth through close examination of the truth behind the martyrdom of William of Norwich.
• Paul Lowe’s illustration of this story (Trashotron.com)
  Perennial M.R. James illustrator Paul Lowe produced a horrifying conception of what the flannel creature from this story may have looked like (scroll to the bottom of the page to find it).
• The Book of Common Prayer (wikipedia)
  Here you can read about the troubled history of the Book of Common Prayer, the first book to publish the forms of common Christian worship in English.
• Psalm 109 (rmjs.co.uk)
  Here you can read the full Book of Common Prayer version of Psalm 109, in all it’s doom-laden glory!

This episode Will and Mike delve into the toy box and pull out something truly horrible in the form of ‘The Haunted Doll’s House‘ by M.R. James!

Show notes:

• Queen Mary’s Dolls’s House
  This story was written for a real dolls’ house, the one created by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens for Queen Mary of Teck between 1921 and 1924. The dolls’ house in currently on display in Windsor. Further details can be found at Wikipedia.
• Strawberry Hill House
  James describes the dolls house in his story as being ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic‘ in style, the ‘quintessence of Horace Walpole‘. Walpole’s gothic castle-style house inspired a generation of architects when it was built on the banks of the Thames in London in the mid 18th century.
• Dolls’ Houses: It’s a Small World
  This enjoyable Guardian.com article looks into the world of modern day dolls’ house collectors.
• Interview with Stephen Gray
  Episode 21 of this very podcast featured an interview with filmmaker Stephen Gray who has recently completed a short film adaptation of this story. Watch it on Vimeo.
• Ghosts & Scholars notes
  The ever-reliable Ghosts & Scholars website contains a useful set of notes on this story compiled by Rosemary Pardoe.
• A frog the size of a man?
  Jim Moon’s excellent illustration.
• Improvised Radio Theatre – With Dice!
  Many thanks to our reader this week, Roger Burton West.  His new RPG podcast is great – and HPL fans will appreciate the domain name…

Due to illness we haven’t managed to record the next full episode yet, but in the meantime here’s a little something we hope you’ll enjoy, an exclusive reading of ‘Sredni Vashtar’ by M.R. James’s literary contemporary Saki (aka H.H. Munro). This reading was recorded specially for the podcast by Hamish Symington! Thanks Hamish!

If you enjoyed this reading then many of Saki’s short stories are freely available on Project Gutenberg. Also, for some thoroughly excellent podcast readings of Saki’s other stories check out the website of Richard Crowest.

Join us in a couple of weeks for the next full episode on ‘The Haunted Dolls’ House‘ by M.R. James!

In this episode Will and Mike travel back in time to the early 18th century to examine some diabolical goings on in rural Cambridgeshire in M.R. James’s ‘The Fenstanton Witch‘.

Show notes:

• Story Locations (Monty’s World)
  This story features many real-world locations, starting in King’s College Cambridge, and following Hardman and Ashe up the Huntindon Road (now the A14) past  Lolworth and on to the church at Fenstanton.
• Alchemy! Enlightenment! Revolution!
  … Britain in the late 17th and early 18th centuries had it all.  Mike recommends two books set around Oxford and Cambridge in this period, both with a pleasing mixture of science, swashbuckling and genre fun: An Instance of the Fingerpost, by Iain Pears, and Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.
• ‘Stories I have tried to write’ by M.R. James (A Podcast to the Curious)
  Although never published in his lifetime, James did mention this story in his essay ‘Stories I have tried to write’, published in 1929. We provided a full reading of the essay back in November 2011.
• ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’ by M.R. James (Ghosts & Scholars)
  In this episode we mention the only other James story to be set at King’s College, another unpublished story called ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’.
• Parker’s Piece, Cambridge (Wikipedia)
  James refers to snipe being shot in this city centre park back at the time when this story took place.
• Isaac Newton’s Catflap (Wikipedia)
  In ‘The Fenstanton Witch’ James refers to the popular myth that Sir Isaac Newton invented the cat flap whilst at King’s College Cambridge.
• The Methuen Treaty (Wikipedia)
  James drops a lot of historical details into his description of 18th Century college life. An example of this is his reference to the MEthuen Treaty with Portugal, which included trade regulations that allows wines to be imported from Portugal without tax.
• The Witch of Berkeley (Living the History)
  Thinking of turning to God when your pact with the devil turns sour? Read the story of the Witch of Berkeley first. C.S. Watkins “History and the Supernatural in Medieval England” provides expert commentary on what went wrong for her – and Hardman and Abel. Also, check out this cool illustration of the witch being carried away by a demon!
• 91st Psalm (Biblegateway.com)
  At the moment in their ritual when the demon appears, Hardman is just reading the 91st psalm.
• Sheila Hodgson (suttonelms.org.uk)
  Will first encountered this story in the form of ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’, a 1977 radio play by Sheila Hodgson that was broadcast as part of a series of plays based on the ideas mentioned by M.R. James in ‘Stories I have tried to write’.
• The 17th Century Witchcraft panic in Cambridgeshire (bbc.co.uk)
  It is likely that this story was inspired by the witchcraft hysteria which swept through western Cambridgeshire in the mid 17th century. More information of it’s victims can be found at witching.org, where you can also find an account of the trials written at the time.
• Arthur Gray aka Ingulphus (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Arthur Gray was a contemporary of M.R. James at Cambridge, where Gray was Master of Jesus College. Between 1910 and 1925 he published a number of ghost stories set at Jesus College under the pseudonym ‘Ingulphus’.

This episode Mike & Will put on their thinking caps and puzzle their way through ‘Two Doctors‘ by M.R. James.

Thanks to Kirsty for the excellent readings, and to Alisdair Wood for the great illustration to the left.

Don’t forget to vote on which story you would like to see Stephen Gray and his crew film next, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ by M.R. James or ‘The Willows’ by Algernon Blackwood.

Show notes

• Story Notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Visit the ever-excellent Ghosts & Scholars for a useful set of notes which shed light on some of the more perplexing aspects of this story.
• Gray’s Inn (Wikipedia)
  James says he found the papers which make up this story in a dossier addressed to a lawyer in Grey’s Inn. Also see Gray’s Inn on Monty’s World.
• Coronet and Bird Crest (MyFamilySilver.com)
  The ‘bedsheets’ purchased by Dr Quinn features a bird and coronet, a motif common to a quite a few family crests from this period.
• St. Anthony meeting the Satyr (Gallery.ca)
  The rector makes reference to ‘Anthony conversing with a satyr’ as featured in the book of Jerome. This is a 1640 engraving of this scene.
• An Elicidation (?) of the Plot of ‘Two Doctors’ by Lance Arney (Amazon.co.uk)
  This essay features in the collection of essays ‘Warnings to the Curious’ and was a great help to us in researching this story.

It’s Christmas Special time again! This year Will & Mike look at the one and only M.R. James story actually set during the festive season, ‘The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance’.

This episode also features a Christmas Bonus in the form of an interview with film director Stephen Gray whose new adaptation of ‘A Haunted Doll’s House’ is available to watch online for a limited period only, starting Christmas Eve!

Our reader this week was Peter Ross and the accompanying artwork is by Alisdair Wood.

As mentioned in our interview, Stephen would like our listeners help deciding which story to film next! Please state your preference below.
Show notes

• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The ever-reliable Ghosts & Scholars website features some useful notes on the more perplexing terms used in this story.
• Punch and Judy (Wikipedia)
  For those unfamiliar with Punch and Judy shows, Wikipedia gives a good explaination of this peculiar form of traditional entertainment.
• Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ (Wikipedia)
  In this story the writer compares Punch’s face to that of ‘the vampyre in Fusili’s foul sketch‘, a reference to the creature in Fuseli’s painting ‘The Nightmare’.
• Bicester, Oxfordshire (Monty’s World)
  Rosemary Pardoe tells us that in the original handwritten manuscript for this story the town called ‘B—‘ in most printed versions is actually given as ‘Bicester’. Bicester is a market town in north Oxfordshire.
• Chrishall, Essex (Monty’s World)
  The first letter in this story is addressed from ‘Great Chrishall’. There is no ‘Great Chrishall’ in the UK, but there is a ‘Chrishall’ and a ‘Great Chishill‘, both near Essex’s border with Cambridgeshire.
• Professor Bert Codman and ‘Toby’ (Punchandjudy.com)
  Mike mentions this fellow in the podcast, one of the famous Codman dynasty of Punch and Judy performers. Apparently Bert died in 1969, just two days after the death of his beloved dog Toby!
• Photos of Bicester (Facebook)
  Will took a trip to Bicester to have a look around the various locations which feature in this story. Photos from the trip can be found at our Facebook page.

The image below shows the King’s Head/Arms inn which features in this story, as it looked in 1885.

In this episode Mike and Will head up the road to Burford to take a peek inside Speaker Lenthall’s Tomb by M.R. James!

Yes, it is another unpublished M.R. James manuscript fragment this week. The most complete version of this story is available in ‘Curious Warning: The Great Stories of M.R. James’ edited by Stephen Jones.

Show notes

• William Lenthall, 1591 – 1662 (Wikipedia)
  The real Speaker Lenthall was a politician during the English Civil War, famous for standing up for the rights of parliament before King Charles I. For more information see www.parliament.uk
• Oxford Movement (wikipedia)
  This story is set against the backdrop of the work of the Oxford Movement, also known as the ‘Tractarians’, who agitated for religious change within the Church of England in the first half of the 19th century.
• Gothic Revival (wikipedia)
  M.R. James once again uses this story to take a swipe at the followers of the gothic architectural revival, whose renovations of English churches during the 19th century resulted in the destruction of many historic church interiors.
• Burford Church (burfordchurch.org)
  The church that features in this story is St John the Baptist Church in Burford, West Oxfordshire. Check out the 360-degree view from the church tower, which gives a very nice view of the town as it looks today.
• Tanfield Tomb (burfordchurch.org)
  The tomb in this story is based on that of an ancestor of Speaker William Lenthall, Sir Lawrence Tanfield. Like the tomb in the story, it fills up most of the north choir aisle of Burford Church, and largely matches the stories description.
• Burford Priory (wikipedia)
  In the story Mr Cave and his family live in what was originally Burford Priory, now a very fancy private residence. Also see this pdf for images of the Priory as it was at the time of this story.
  Those in the UK can also watch this episode of ‘Time Team’ on 4oD in which they excavate the remains of the priory hospital beneith the front lawn! And finally, how do you link Speaker Lenthall to the phone hacking scandal? Easy!
• More photos on Facebook (facebook.com)
  To see photos taken by Will of Burford Church, the Tanfield/Lenthall tomb and of Burford Priory, head over to our Facebook page.

This episode Mike & Will examine John Humphreys. No, not the newsreader, the unfinished story draft by M.R. James!

The most complete version of the manuscript, as transcribed by Rosemary Pardoe, can be read online at the Ghosts & Scholars Website.

Big thanks for the readings goes to Kirsty W… no wait, Kirsty Taylor! Also thanks to Alisdair Wood to the excellent M.R. James image to the right. Don’t forget to check out his T-shirts at zazzle.com.

Show notes:

• The Vale Royal of England (Wikipedia)
  This story is set in ‘Perhaps the Vale Royal of England’, an area in north Cheshire. Also have a look at the area on our own Monty’s World.
• Stories I Have Tried to Write by M.R. James
  The plot of this story gets a mention by James in his essay ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’ which we covered in a previous episode.
• Sinister Bible Quotes (Bible.cc)
  Like many James stories, John Humphreys quotes the bible in a number of places, notable the 23rd Psalm, Jeremiah xiii:16, Job x:21-22 and the Vulgate of St Jerome.
• Saint Cyprian and Saint Justina (Wikipedia)
  This story contains a reference to a ‘wizard’, apparently a reference to the story of St Cyprian and St Justina in the Golden Legend.
• … also mentioned in this episode were the Garbage Pail Kids and Bookshelf P*rn.

Also, we’d love to hear what you think about this story! Get in contact via Facebook, Twitter, Email or in the comments section below.

This episode Will & Mike slip into their cassocks, whip out their prayerbooks and head down to Southminster for ‘An Episode of Cathedral History’ by M.R. James.

Questions answered in this episode:
– When is a vampire not a vampire?
– Do Lamia have hairy legs?
– What length of skirt do Mike and Will wear?

Big thanks go out to Roger Burton West who provided the readings, and Alisdair Wood for the awesome custom illustration on the right!

Show notes

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (wikipedia)
  This story refers twice to characters in Dickens’s famously unfinished novel ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’.
• Rochester Cathedral (Monty’s World)
  There are various suggestions in the story that M.R. James may have had Rochester Cathedral in mind while writing this story.
• Isaiah 34:14 (bible.cc)
  This website illustrated quite how much the Isaiah quote which appears in this story differs from one translation to another!
• Lamia  & Satyr (wikipedia)
  The latin quotes in this story make reference to two creatures from Greek Mythology, the Lamia and the Satyr.
• The Demon in the Cathedral by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Apparently the plot of this story was used as part of a hoax played on Fate magazine in 1977!
• The Lamia and the Screech-owl by Peter Bell (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This essay examines ‘An Episode of Cathedral History’ and discusses the mythical creatures mentioned in the story.
• Charles Simeon (wikipedia)
  This story refers to ‘Simeon’s Lot’, a reference to the English evangelical preacher Charles Simeon, who James’s own father was a follower of.
• Patrick J Murphy (Miami University) & Fred Porcheddu (Denison University)
  Patrick and Fred are two American academics who are conducting research into the medaevalist and antiquarian background of M.R. James’s stories.
• Warnings to the Curious (Amazon.co.uk)
  During this episode we mention various essays which are featured in this book, including essays by Michael A. Mason, Jacqueline Simpson
• A Pleasing Terror (Amazon.co.uk)
  The excellent footnotes on this story in the ‘A Pleasing Terror’ ebook were of great help to us when researching this story.
• Speaker Lenthall’s Tomb (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The unfinished James tale dubbed by Rosemary Pardie ‘Speaker Lenthall’s Tomb’ bears some striking similarities to ‘An Episode of Cathedral History’.
• The Gothic Revival (Wikipedia)
  It is an understatement to say that M.R. James was not a big fan of the architectural changes undertaken in British churches in the name of the gothic revival during the 18th and 19th century.

This episode Mike and Will recoil in horror from some fearsome home furnishings in ‘The Diary of Mr Poynter’ by M.R. James.

Big thanks to our reader for this episode, the mighty Paul Maclean (@ysdc on Twitter). You may know Paul from the ‘Call of Cthulhu’ RPG hub Yog-Sothoth.com and it’s Lovecraftian publishing wing InnsmouthHouse.com. He is also one of the presenters of the News from Pnakotus and The Silver Lodge podcasts, both required listening for weird fiction and RPG fans!

Also big thanks to Alisdair Wood, the massively talented artist who provided us with the awesome specially-created ‘Diary of Mr Poynter’ artwork you can see above. You can find more exciting James-inspired artwork at Alisdair Wood’s website.

Show notes:

• Rendcomb Manor, Gloucestershire (Monty’s World)
  While in the story Rendcomb Manor is said to be in Warwickshire, the real Rendcomb Manor is in Gloucestershire. Now home to Rendcomb College, it is not clear if James had this ancient estate in mind when he wrote the story.
• Anti-vivisection movement and the Brown Dog Affair (Wikipedia)
  Miss Denton is an advocate of the Anti-vivisection moment, which was gathering momentum in the decade before this story was published.
• William Poynter, Bishop (Wikipedia)
  M.R. James borrowed the name of his diarist from an English bishop who published various religious tracts during the early 19th century.
• Dr Arthur Charlett, University College Oxford (Wikisource)
  Mr Poynter’s diary states that the famously hirsute (and presumably fictional) Everard Charlett was of the same family as Dr Arthur Charlett, who was Master of University College Oxford for 30 years until his death in 1722.
• Thomas Hearne, Antiquarian (Wikipedia)
  James mentions in the story that William Poynter argued with English antiquarian Thomas Hearne (1678 – 1735).
• Dr Robert Plot, Naturalist (Wikipedia)
  Mr Poynter’s diary suggests that there may be precedents for the strange death of Everard Charlett to be found in the work of Robert Plot. Plot English naturalist whose works mentioned strange natural phenomena such as the ‘double sunset’ at Leek in Staffordshire, a giants femur bone etc.
• Feast of St Jude and St Simon (CatholicCulture.org)
  James mentions that the curtains are finally delivered on the Feast of St Jude and St Simon, the 28th October. In his book Suffolk and Norfolk M.R. James notes that stained glass images of Jude and Simon can be found in the parish church at Denton in Norfolk, although his use of this as a name for his protagonist could be a coincidence!
• Thomas Philips, Antiquarian (Wikipedia)
  M.R. James mentions in the story that prior to purchase by James Denton, Mr Poynter’s diary was part of the ‘famous Thomas collection’ of manuscripts. Thomas Philips was an antiquarian and obsessive book collector who left a collection of around 100,000 books and manuscripts at the time of his death in 1872 which were auctioned off over a number of years.
• Ghosts and Scholars postcard (Ghosts & Scholars Website)
  Ghosts and Scholars are selling this rather scary bookmark featuring an image of Everard Charlett’s hairy coffin!
• Shakespeare authorship question (Wikipedia)
  In the story Mr Cattell makes a reference to ‘Hercules and the painted cloth’, which Rosemary Pardoe suggests may be a hint towards the argument/conspiracy theory that someone else may have written Shakespeare’s works.
• The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkin Gilman (Wikipedia)
  There are parallels between this story and the short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by American Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman which was published in 1892. This story was also recently examined in detail by the HPPodcraft.
• Game of Bear Story Competition (thesuffolkcoast.co.uk)
  Suffolk Coast are running a competition for under 16’s to write an ending for M.R. James’s unfinished story Game of Bear. Closing date is 1st November, the winner will be selected by author Susan Hill.

Mike is off on his honeymoon at the moment, so in lieu of a full episode Will provides a reading of and short commentary on an M.R. James essay ‘Ghosts – Treat them Gently!‘ which was originally published in the Evening News on 17 April 1931.

In the essay Monty talks about what ingredients he thinks go to make up a really successful ghost story, and gives an insight into the supernatural fiction he rates most highly.

Links

• The ‘Not at Night’ series
• Society for Psychical Research
• Mr Wardle’s Fat Boy
• Sheridan Le Fanu
• William Harrison Ainsworth
• The Lancashire Witches (Novel by above)
• E.F Benson
• Algernon Blackwood
• A. M. Burrage
• Walter de la Mare
• H. Russell Wakefield
• Margaret Oliphant
• Lanoe Falconer

Join Mike and Will as they peer through their scrying glass at the second installment of ‘The Residence at Whitminster’ by M.R. James.

More black magic, strange visions, swarms of satanic flies and is that Beelzebub hiding in the closet? Or is it just R. Kelly? One things for sure, you’ll never look into your underwear draw in the same way again!

Show notes:

• William Oldys (wikipedia)
  This English antiquarian and bibliographer provided James with the inspiration for Dr Oldys in ‘Residence at Whitminster’.
• Sir Walter Scott – The Talisman (wikipedia)
  This is the book which Mary is reading in ‘Residence at Whitminster’ that puts the idea of talismans and scrying into her mind.
• Ichneumonoidea Fly aka Sawfly (wikipedia)
  Is this the strange species of insect that the inhabitants have such difficulty conclusively identifying?
• Anna Seward (wikipedia)
  Anna Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield’, is the English romantic poet whose prose style James parodies in Mary Oldys’s letter to her friend Emily.
• Beelzebub – The Lord of the Flies (wikipedia)
  Could the sorcery of Lord Saul have literally summoned up Beelzebub, the devil? In various texts Beelzebub appears in the form of a swarm of flies.
• M.R. James – The Fenstanton Witch (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Simon McCollough describes M.R. James’s unpublished short stoy ‘The Fenstanton Witch’ as a prototype for ‘Residence at Whitminster’. It also features a pair of young necromancers whose naive sorceries summon up a terrible winged creature, and also namechecks the Witch of Endor. ‘An Evening’s Entertainment’ by M.R. James also features a horrible swarm of flies, which a sexton describes as “Lord of the Flies, sir”.
• Salem’s Lot (1979) (youtube)
  This is the ‘window’ scene from the 1979 Stephen King adaptation which reminded Will of the ghost of Saul tapping at the villagers windows on cold winters nights.
• R.Kelly – Trapped in the Closet (youtube)
  The Oldys family are not the only ones with some closet trouble, check out R.Kelly’s magnum opus, his epic 22-part ‘hip-hopera’ “Trapped in the Closet”!

Join Mike & Will for the first in a two part special on ‘The Residence at Whitminster’ by M.R. James! No black cockerels were harmed in the recording of this podcast (OK, maybe one or two. It’s called research people).

This episode features readings by Hamish Symington and Peter Ross.

Show Notes:

• M.R. James – An Informal Portrait by Michael Cox (Amazon)
  For details of Monty’s life during WWI we lean heavily on Michael Cox’s excellent biography. It is sadly now out of print but secondhand copies are available, if expensive. Try your local library before you splash out, they may be able to order it in for you.
• Warnings to the Curious (Ed. Joshi & Pardoe) (Amazon)
  We have recommended this many times before, but once again this great book of essays has helped a lot with our understanding of the story.
• Whitminster/Wheatenhurst, Gloucestershire (Googlemaps)
  The real Whitminster can be found here, although it was known as Wheatenhurst in James’s lifetime. More information on Whitminster House and estate, from which the place got it’s new name, can be found at british-history.ac.uk. Also see the Whitminster Community Website.
• Saul, in the Bible (Wikipedia)
  Lord Saul’s namesake appears in the Books of Samuel, and comes to a sticky end after some necromantic funny-business involving the Witch of Endor (no, not that Endor).
• Some Remarks on Ghost Stories by M.R. James (Ash Tree Press)
  In this episode we mention the M.R. James essay ‘Some Remarks on Ghost Stories’ which can be found in the ‘Pleasing Terror’ M.R. James anthology. The hardback is out of print but the eBook version is available.

Robert Lloyd Parry as M.R. James – photo by Shelagh Bidwell

On the 1st August it will be exactly 150 years since the birth of M.R. James, and in this special episode Will and Mike are celebrating Monty’s Sesquicentenary in style with the help of England’s finest Jamesian actor, Robert Lloyd Parry!

Robert had been performing his trilogy of one-man shows based on James’s work since 2005 and is also a noted expert on the life and work of M.R. James. In this exclusive interview for A Podcast to the Curious Robert talks about his experiences performing as Monty, how he goes about adapting James’s work for the stage and why he thinks M.R. James’s ghost stories are still so popular 76 years after his death.

More information on Robert Lloyd Parry’s future performances and dvds/cds can be found at www.nunkie.co.uk

This episode also features an exclusive listener-only CD offer for Robert Lloyd Parry’s ‘Curious Creatures: The Shorter Horror of M.R. James‘ audiobook. Details at the end of the episode!

This episode Mike and Will get hopelessly lost in ‘Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance’. It’s a-maze-ing!

Show notes:

• Two Ghosts & Scholars Essays
  We referred extensively to two outstanding examinations of the symbolism and antiquarian lore behind the story: Martin Hughes’, “A Maze of Secrets in a Story by M.R. James“, reprinted in Warnings to the Curious and “James Wilson’s Secret”, by Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls.  Both well worth a read.
• Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance (TV Version)
  This story was adapted in an abridged form for the ITV schools programme ‘Music Scene’ in the 1970’s. A very low quality rip is available on YouTube but we recommend you invest in the DVD of Casting the Runes which features a much higher quality version as an extra.
  
• Wilsthorpe (GoogleMaps)
  There are two real Wilsthorpes, one in Lincolnshire and the other in Yorkshire but there is no solid evidence that M.R. James was thinking of either when writing the story.
• Possible Maze Inspirations
  James new Suffolk and it’s stately homes like the back of his hand. With his in mind, could the yew maze in this story have been inspired by the similar yew maze at Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk, designed and planted in 1846? Like Wilsthorpe hall, the grounds have various classical/Italian features, including an globe-shaped equatorial sundial (decorated with astrological symbols) which reminds us of the globe in ‘Mr Humphreys…’.
  Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls speculate that the turf labyrinth at Hilton, Cambridgeshire may also have provided inspiration. It dates from the 17th century and would have certainly been known to James due to it’s close proximity to Cambride. It also features a central pillar at the centre, with a globe and an inscription in latin, that commemorates the death of the mazes creator William Sparrow (1641–1729).
• Mazes (Wikipedia)
  Wikipedia features useful introductions to both hedge mazes and mazes in general, including a list of notable mazes.
• Marjery Wardrop (Wikipedia)
  During this episode Will speculates that James’s choice of ‘Wardrop’ as a name may have been inspired by his contemporary folklorist Marjery Wardrop.
• Labyrinth (1986)
  The mad-as-a-bag-of-ferrets maze-fest much loved by Mike, starring David Bowie’s crotch. It’s like ‘Alive in Wonderland’, but with added muppets and musical numbers. Watch the trailer on YouTube or chech out the bonkers Magic Dance Sequence. And if you enjoyed that, why not check out the Top 10 Mazes in Films, although they miss out Will’s personal favourite Cube.

In this episode Mike and Will investigate strange goings on in 17th Century Devon in Martin’s Close by M.R. James.

Unrequited love, scoundrel squires, courtroom highjinx, bloody judges, amorous yokels and barbarous murder are all on the cards. It’s like The Archers, but even more horrible. Strap in!

Don’t forget to check out our Visit to Martin’s Close Video on YouTube.

Show notes:

Notes on Martin’s Close by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts and Scholars) Ghosts and Scholars remains the number #1 source for Jamesian scholarship, and these notes on Martin’s Close are essential reading.

Sampford Courtenay, Devon (Wikipedia)
In the intro to ‘Complete Ghost Stories’ (1931) James admitted that the village he had in mind for Martin’s Close was Sampford Courtenay in Devon. Sampford Courtenay is perhaps more famous for the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549.

The New Inn at Sampford Courtenay (www.the-newinn.com)
The pub featured in Martin’s Close is a real place, a grade II listed old coaching inn originally build in the 16th Century. Also see Google Street View.

Judge George Jeffreys (Wikipedia)
The anti-hero of Martin’s Close is the famous ‘bloody judge’ George Jeffreys. Jeffreys was given the dubious honour of a 1970’s horror treatment in The Bloody Judge (1970) in which he is protrayed as a sadistic villain.  But was he really a bloody-handed executioner or much-maligned champion of justice? You can find out more at cyberussr.com.

Madam, Will You Walk? (www.flutetunes.com)
The love song which is given such a sinister twist in Martin’s Close is a real one. The tune and lyrics can be found here, or also on www.contemplator.com. Also see YouTube for a rather nice Tin Whistle version under a different name.

A Source for Martin’s Close? by Murial Smith (Ghosts and Scholars)
As mentioned in the podcast, Murial Smith suggests that James may have taken inspiration for Martin’s Close from Annals of the Parish(1821) by John Galt which James is known to have read. Do have a look at the chapter for 1797 which has the story of Henry Malcombe and “poor haverel lassie Meg Gaffaw”, which might have inspired Monty to write ‘Martin’s Close’.

Was Ann Clark Pregnant? by Tina Rath (Ghosts and Scholars)
A controversial idea is set forward in this very interesting essay. James famously disapproved of sex in ghost stories, but the possibility that Ann Clark could be pregnant would certainly tie up a lot of loose ends in the story.

Thomas Gurney, Joseph Glanvill and John Dolben (Wikipedia)
Various minor names mentioned in Martin’s Close are those of real people. Thomas Gurney was an 18th Century courtroom shorthand writer. Joseph Glanvill was a 17th Century writer and philosopher who wrote a famous text on witchcraft. John Dolben was a 17th Century politician and barrister.

On the Care of the Dead by Augustine (Google Books)
Was Ann Clark an unholy vision, or divine vengeance? Monty namechecks Augustin’s letter On the Care of the Dead, which leaves both options open.

Red Barn Murders (Wikipedia)
We give the notorious 1827 ‘Red Barn Murders’ a mention during the podcast as an example where supernatural evidence has been presented in court.

The Spencer Cowper/ Sarah Stout (Newgate Calendar)
Another trial for murder from 1699 which bares some resemblance to the events of Martin’s Close. The son of the 2nd Baronet of Hertford was accused of murdering a young Quaker girl who had become infatuated with him.

Bonus video!

Camera in hand, Mike, Will and Kirsty head down to Devon to visit the real-world location of Martin’s Close…

Church matters concern Will and Mike this episode as they don their literary cassocks and plant their proverbial buttocks upon ‘The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral’ by M.R. James.

Snow notes:

• The Double Shadow Podcast (www.thedoubleshadow.com)
  An exciting new podcast dedicated to American M.R. James admire Clark Ashton Smith.
• M.R. James performances by the Nunkie Theatre Company (www.nunkie.co.uk)
  Nunkie Theatre Company has announced another run of performances based on M.R. James stories performed by the grand panjandrum and actor Robert Lloyd Parry. He will be invoking a pleasing terror in audiences throughout the UK between July and December. Don’t miss!
• The Stalls of Barchester (1971 TV version – wikipedia)
  This story has been dramatised for the screen only once, back in 1971, as the first installment of  BBC television’s classic ‘Ghost Story for Christmas’ series. The series is finally being given the DVD treatment this year by the BFI.
• Anthony Trollope’s Chronicles of Barsetshire (wikipedia)
  Was M.R. James’s Barchester based on the identically-named cathedral town which features heavily in a series of books by Anthony T? Or is that just a load of old Trollope?
• The Gentlemen’s Magazine (wikipedia)
  In this story Archdeacon Haynes’s obituary is said to have featured in the Gentleman’s magazine, which ran between 1731 and 1922.
• Sir George Gilbert Scott (wikipedia)
  The cathedral in James’s story is said to have been redesigned by Sir Gilbert Scott. James was not a fan of the rather radical changes which architects like Scott inflicted on English churches during the 19th century.
• The Friar of Orders Grey (recmusic.com)
  Haynes’s description of the choir stalls describes one as appearing like a ‘friar of orders grey’. This is a nod to a popular folk ballad about a bawdy Franciscan friar.
• St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle (BBC Website)
  The ornate carvings described in this story could have been inspired by the misericords at a chapel in Windsor, near Eton where James spent much of his life. He went on to write a book about them in 1933 – ‘St Geroge’s Chapel, Windsor: The Woodwork of the choir’.
• Warnings to the Curious (hippocampuspress.com)
  In this episode we mention various essays which appear in the excellent ‘Warnings to the Curous’, including essays by John Alfred Taylor and Steven J. Mariconda.

This episode we return to the diabolical doings of Mr Karswell in part two of our examination of ‘Casting the Runes’ by M.R. James.

Show notes:

• Comparative Mythology and the Cambridge Ritualists (Wikipedia)
  The criticism of Karswell’s writing style could be read as M.R. James having a dig at his academic contemporaries working in theoretical subjects that James thought were nonsense. For example see James’s ‘flaying’ of Jane Ellen Harrison (erratum: we incorrectly call her ‘Katherine Harrison’ in recording, sorry!).
• The Golden Legend and The Golden Bough (Wikipedia)
  The two very different texts which Mr Karswell is described as putting exactly on par and taking both as historical fact.
• Thomas Bewick (1753-1826) (Wikipedia)
  The “woodcut of Bewick’s” mentioned in Casting the Runes refers to English wood engraver Thomas Bewick, whose work varied between both studies of nature and the bawdy and macabre. For example a man followed by demons, a man urinating on a wall, and men riding gravestones.
• The ‘Black Spot’ (Wikipedia)
  James refers to the ‘black spot’ being put on John Harrington, a reference to Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Lewis Stevenson.
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Project Gutenberg)
  The extract from the poem which Karswell sends to Harrington can be found in ‘Part the Sixth’ of Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
• Lord Warden Hotel, Dover (www.dover-kent.co.uk)
  Dunning and Harrington finish their adventure at a real hotel in Dover, the Lord Warden. The building is still there today, but no longer a hotel.
• St. Vulfran’s Church, Abbeville, France (Wikipedia)
  Karswell meets his death at a French church that M.R. James had visited on a previous holiday. The church is dedicated to St. Vulfran (or Wulfram) of Sens. Karswell’s death reminded us of the death of Adam Buxton’s character in Hot Fuzz (youtube – warning, it is gory!).
• Casting the Runes (1979) (Irish Gothic Horror Journal)
  An excellent review of the 1979 tv version of Casting the Runes. As mentioned in the podcast, we also didn’t rate it very highly but still recommend you purchase the dvd if only for the interesting extras that come on the disc.
• Kate Bush/Night of the Demon mashup (Youtube)
  The “it’s in the trees! It’s coming!” sample from the start of Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds of Love’ is a sample from Night of the Demon, the 1957 film of Casting the Runes. Thanks to @rodmckie for drawing our attention to this superb video mashup which combines footage from ‘Night of the Demon’ with various Kate Bush footage to great effect.
• For more Casting the Runes-related links, see the show notes for part one.

Also! Robert Lloyd Parry was announced the next run of his excellent M.R. James stage performances between July and December 2012, including the world premier of his new show featuring ‘Count Magnus’ and ‘Number 13’! For more information visit the Nunkie Productions Website.

Join Mike & Will as they delve into Brian Blessed’s beard, the truth of alchemy, diabolical magic lantern shows and class war in the first of our two-part extravaganza on M.R. James’s chilling story ‘Casting the Runes’!
Our reader for this episode is Mr Torion Bowles.

Show notes:

• Magic Lanterns (Wikipedia)
  Mr Karswell was not the first to use a magic lantern to scare the crap out of his audience, it’s been going on since the 15th century!
• Aleister Crowley (Wikipedia)
  Many have commented on the similarities between the fictional Mr Karswell and the English occultist, poet and mountaineer Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).
• ‘Class War in Casting the Runes’ by Mike Pincombe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Mike Pincombe’s exploration of class conflict in Casting the Runes is a must-read.
• Night/Curse of the Demon (1957) (Trailer – Youtube)
  The first and best screen adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’ was filmed in 1957 as ‘Night of the Demon’ (released as ‘Curse of the Demon’ in the U.S.). Superbly atmospheric and worth watching for Niall MacGuiness’s exemplary performance as Mr Karswell. It is available on DVD.
• Casting the Runes (1979) (Amazon)
  Casting the Runes was brought forward to the seventies in this 50 minute UK tv version. It is clearly very low budget and not very good to be honest, but still worth purchasing on DVD as it is cheap and comes with two decent extras, a short tv version of ‘Mr Humphreys and his Interitance’ and a very enjoyable documentary about the author.
• Drag me to Hell (2009) (Trailer – Youtube)
  Sam Raimi’s 2009 splatter-fest ‘Drag me to Hell’ is a loose (and unacknowledged) adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’. James would have hated it but fans of OTT gorefests will love it!
• Lamplough’s Pyretic Saline (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This is the ‘highly convincing’ advert that Dunning examins in the tram shortly before spotting the strange message about John Harrington.
• The British Library (bl.co.uk)
  The real-world location of Dunning’s first encounter with Karswell.
• London United Tramways (Wikipedia)
  In ‘Casting the Runes’ Dunning travels to work and back on the then-new London tram network operating in the west and south of London.
• A Podcast to the Curious Merchandise Store
  That’s right, you can now grab yourself an Official APTTC t-shirt in a wide range of exciting colours! It’s what all the cool kids are wearing nowadays!

In this episode Mike & Will whip out their library cards and prepare to crack the spine of ‘The Tractate Middoth’ by M.R. James.

Questions addressed in this episode include: Does Mr Eldred like MC Hammer? Did Sir Jimmy Saville make a pact with the devil? Is Miss Simpson a slamming hotty or merely a comely wench? And is it even politically correct to call someone a wench in this day and age?

Show Notes:

• The Lost Will of Dr Rant (1951) (archive.org)
  This American television version of ‘The Tractate Middoth’ was part of the ‘Lights Out’ mystery series, and stars none other than a young Leslie Nielson!
• Cambridge University Library (cam.ac.uk)
  The real world location of this story was the university library at Cambridge, though the current library is no longer housed in the same building as it was in James’s time.
• Bredfield, Suffolk (googlemaps)
  The likely real-world location of Dr Rant/Mr Eldred’s house, Bredfield in Suffolk. Note Melton station about three miles to the south east (or shorter if you go across country!).
• E.W. Pugin (1834 – 1875) (Wikipedia)
  Information on E.W. Pugin, who may or may not be linked to this story.
• The Real Tractate Middoth (google books)
  More information on the real book can be read in ‘A history of the Mishnaic law of Holy Things, Volume 2’, available on Google Books.
• Squire Toby’s Will by J. Sheridan le Fanu (horrormasters.com)
  The plot of this story by M.R. James’s favourite author of ghost stories bares some resemblance to the plot of ‘The Tractate Middoth’.
• Piccadilly Weepers and More (oook.info)
  Information on Piccadilly/Dundreary Weepers and other fabulous contemporary facial hair styles can be found here.
• Tractate Middoth Postcard & Bookmark (Ghosts & Scholars)
• Burial of William McKenzie (forteantimes.com)
  Liverpool architect and builder William McKenzie (1794 – 1851) was supposedly buried sitting up in a pyramid-shaped tomb to trick the devil, to whom he had sold his soul in exchange for luck at cards.
• Burial of Sir Jimmy Saville (telegraph.co.uk)
  We were slightly mistaken in the podcast, Sir Jimmy Saville was not buried sitting up but propped up at a 45 degree angle so he could ‘see the sea’!

In this episode Will & Mike experience the horticultural horror of M.R. James’s ‘The Rose Garden’. Thanks to Kirsty Woodfield who was our reader for this episode.

Show notes:

• Popish Plot Playing Cards (BritishMuseum.org)
  Having trouble getting your head around the popish plot? Why not invest in a pack of Popish Plot Playing Cards! Alas hundreds of years out of print. The Seven of Hearts is the one of Edward Coleman being ‘drawn’ to his execution behind a horse, and the Six of Diamonds is also particularly gruesome.
• M.R. James’s Women by David G. Rowlands (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This essay looks at the small selection of women who appear in James’s work, including ‘The Rose Garden’s Mrs Anstruther.
• “The Rules of Folklore” in the Ghost Stories of M.R. James by Jacqueline Simpson
  Landmarks and Shrieking Ghosts by Jacqueline Simpson
  An excellent pair of essays originally published in Ghosts & Scholars that drew our attention to the influence of Danish and Suffolk folklore on ‘The Rose Garden’.
• Weald Country Park, Essex (Wikipedia)
  The site of the former Weald Hall, residence of the terrible Sir William Scroggs and the possible real-world ‘Westfield Hall’. The hall fell into disrepair and was pulled down after world war II but the park can still be visited and looks like a nice day out!
• Victims of the Popish Plot (Wikipedia)
  Wikipedia provides a brief rundown of those accused during the popish plot. Play special attention to Sir William Scroggs, Oliver Plunkett and Edward Colman!
• The Head of Oliver Plunkett (Wikipedia)
  As mentioned in this episode, popish plot victim Oliver Plunkett’s head is on display in Drogheda, Ireland. A possible inspiration for the strange face in ‘The Rose Garden’?
• Proceedings against Sir William Scroggs (on Google Books)
  Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials features a transcript of the indictment against Sir William Scroggs that makes very interesting (and frequently humorous) reading.
• Gaude, Gaudy, Domini in Laude by Roger Johnson
  The essay that drew my attention to Weald Hall was featured in the Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter 15, not available online but an incentive (if more were needed) to subscribe to this foremost Jamesian news source.
• Eastscapes: Doggerland
  Photographic work by friend of the podcast and M.R. James fan David Senior will be on display at the House Gallery in Camberwell, London from the 15-22nd March 2012 as part of his collaboration with artists Misa Tamura and Dan Howse.

Errata: Since recording we have been informed that the correct term is ‘Hanged’ rather than ‘Hung’. Could we be arsed to go back and re-record? We could not.

In this episode Mike & Will return to M.R. James’s old alma mater for chaos in the classroom, death in the dormitory and revenge in the refectory.

That’s right, it’s ‘A School Story’!

N.b. If you have forgotten your gym-kit, you have to listen to this episode in your vest and pants.

Show notes:

• The History of Temple Grove School (.pdf)
  The school in ‘A School Story’ is based on the prep school that M.R. James attended, Temple Grove School which was at the time based in East Sheen, London.
• Site of Temple Grove School on Googlemaps
  Temple Grove School is not longer in existance, but this gives an idea of where the parkland in which it stood used to be. Note Well Lane where the old stable stands (now converted to a very nice looking house) and where we spotted yew trees! In the photo of us below we are standing at the north-eastern end of Observatory road, where the lake used to be. This Map from 1895 gives an indication of where the school stood (see ‘H’), and this map shows the layout of Temple Grove Estate in 1811.
• “I’ve Seen It!” – A School Story and the House in Berkeley Square by Rosemary Pardoe
  Here Rosemary Pardoe provides some background information on the legends surrounding the famously haunted 50 Berkeley Square in London, mentioned in ‘A School Story’.
• Ancient Coin Pendants
  Jewelry such as the ‘coin charm’ that Mr Sampson wears on his watch chain is not hard to come by these days! For more info on Byzantine coins see Wikipedia.
• Eton and Kings (Ghosts & Scholars)
  M.R. James published a volume of recollections about his life at school and in academia.
• Ancient Yews Group FAQs
  Yew trees are a common sight in English churchyards. The Ancient Yew Group website provides some interesting information on the historical and mythological significance of yew trees.
• ‘A School Story’ at FreakyTrigger
  Some excellent analysis of this story at FreakyTrigger, plus some interesting views in the comments.
• ‘The Well’ by W.W. Jacobs
  This story, published in 1902 by James’s contemporary W.W. Jacobs, features some similarities to ‘A School Story’. Mike Pincombe highlights this story in his excellent essay ‘Homosexual Panic and the English Ghost Story’ (Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter 9).

Visit to the Site of Temple Grove School, East Sheen

Top: Temple Grove Estate, East Sheen, 1812
Bottom: Mike & Will at Temple Grove Estate, East Sheen, 2012.

Can you spot the differences? Hint: top image = more bonnets, bottom image = less swans.

We are standing in the slight dip in Observatory Rd that marks where the lake stood 200 years before. Mike had brought his umbrella to fight off the swans. Turns out this was unneccesary.

In this episode Will & Mike follow M.R. James on a terrifying treasure hunt to Germany in ‘The Treasure of Abbot Thomas’.

Show notes:

• Steinfeld Abbey & Glass (also see Googlemaps)
  Read about the read-world location of this story on wikipedia.
• The Treasure of Steinfeld Abbey, A Visit to the Scene of “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas” by Helen Grant
  Interesting account of a visit to Steinfeld, in which Helen Grant compares the real abbey to the one described by M.R. James.
• Ashridge Park
  This story was inspired by James’s own study of the stained glass at Ashridge Park in 1904. The glass is now in the Victoria & Albert museum in London, and the park is now home to Ashridge Business School (check out the cool virtual tour!)
• Steinfeld stained glass in Wales
  To illustrate how widely glass from Germany and Belguim circulated in Britain, here some more of the Steinfeld stained glass shows up in a church in Wales!
• Review at GhostingImages.com
  An excellent review of the 1974 tv version.
• Origin of “Gare à qui la touche” (“Woe to he that touches it”)
  The origin of this ominous phrase appears to be Napoleonic!
• An Introduction to Classical Cryptography by William Stalling
  A useful guide for those who wish to get their head around the cryptographic puzzles solved by Mr Somerton.
• ‘A Pleasing Terror’ (Ash Tree Press)
  This definitive anthology of and commentary on James work is now available as an e-book.
• Ghost Stories of Christmas at the BFI Mediateque
  You can currently watch the BBC’s classic M.R. James tv adaptations at the BFI Mediateque centres.

This episode features the second half of our podcast extravaganza on M.R. James’s seaside shocker ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’. Neither beach nor bedtime will ever be the same again!

Thanks again to Tom Hemmings who lent us his wonderful voice for the readings, and to Dave Senior (EastScapes) for the excellent groyne photo.

Show notes:

• ‘The Toad in the Study: M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft & Forbidden Knowledge’ by Simon McCulloch
  This essay first appeared in Ghosts & Scholars 20-23, and can now be found in ‘Warnings to the Curious’, a book of excellent criticism edited by Rosemary Pardoe and S.T. Joshi.
• ‘Innocents and Not-So-Innocents in the Stories of M. R. James’ by John Alfred Taylor
  Another essay featured in ‘Warnings to the Curious’ which explores and categorises what M.R. James’s characters did (if anything) to deserve the horrors that confront them.
• Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
  Read more about this Templar-tastic Spanish horror film which features many ‘Oh, Whistle…’-esque qualities.

For more ‘Oh, Whistle…’-related links, see the post for Episode 7a.

In this episode Mike & Will look into ghosts, golf and some decidedly fishy goings-on in Felixstowe in the first of a 2-part special on M.R. James’s ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’!

Big thanks to Tom Hemmings who returns as our reader for this episode.

Show Notes

• ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ by M.R. James
  Read the full text at Wikisource.
• Felixstowe Golf Course and Beach on GoogleMaps
  Here can be seen the real-world setting of ‘Oh, Whistle…’
• 1968 TV version on Youtube
  Watch the BBCs classic adaptation, starring Michael Horden.
• 2010 TV version on IMDB
  Read about the BBCs recent tv adaptation, starring John Hurt.
• Review of the 2010 TV version at The Gothic Imagination
  Includes some very interesting discussion in the comments section.
• The Quadruple Object and Ontography
  A website explaining the area of modern study now known at Ontography.
• Pilgrim’s Progress Quote
  This is the section of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress that comes to Parkins’ mind when seeing a figure following him along the beach.
• “I Shall Most Likely Be out on the Links”: Golf as Metaphor in the Ghost Stories of M. R. James. by Terry W. Thompson
  A really interesting essay relevant to this story.
• The meaning of “Fur/Fla/Fle/Bus” at Ghosts & Scholars
  Ghosts & Scholars provides a summary of the various speculations about the meaning of the text found on the whistle.
• Photo of the beach below Cobbolds Point, Felixstowe circa 1900
  The more touristy part of the beach at Felixstowe, south of where Parkins had his horrible experience.
• Info on the Felixstowe Bath Hotel | Photo of Felixstowe Bath Hotel
  This is the hotel on which James based The Globe Inn in ‘Oh, Whistle…’. The hotel is sadly no more, having been burned down by Suffragette arsonists on April 28th 1914!
• Image of ‘The Lodge’ Felixstowe | ‘The Lodge’ on GoogleMaps
  This is the house owned by James’s friend Felix Cobbold, and where parties of friends from Kings College would meet for holidays (and probably a round of golf or two at the nearby golf course).
• Penelope Fitzgerald on M.R. James
  In this 2000 article for the Guardian, author Penelope Fitzgerald examines James the man as well as James the writer and compares James’s personality to that of Parkins in ‘Oh, Whistle…’
• ‘Bleak and Solemn…’ at k-punk
  This article retraces the Norfolk and Suffolk locations used in the filming of the 1960’s TV versions of ‘Oh, Whistle…’ and ‘A Warning to the Curious’. Photos are provided to show the locations as they are today (well, in 2007).
• Knights Templar on Wikipedia
  Read about the history of this much-maligned order of religious knights.

In this Christmas Special* Will and Mike get stuck into Count Magnus by M.R. James, and explore some startling questions:

• What is the connection between Count Magnus and Ghostbusters 2?
• Will sewing your corpse into the carcass of a deer save your soul from the devil?
• Would Mr Wraxall prefer to have been shot in the balls by Robocop?

Answers to these questions and much, much more can be found in this bumber festive edition of the greatest and only M.R. James podcast! This episode features readings by Chris Savory.

Show notes:

• About the real Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (Wikipedia)
• An image and map of the real manor at Råbäck
• Varnham Abbey, the site of the mausoleum of Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (Wikipedia)
• ‘The Familiar’ by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Full text at Gaslight)
• The Black Pilgrimage to Chorazin by Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls (Ghosts & Scholars)
• Dark Devotions – M.R. James and the Magical Tradition by Ron Weighell (Ghosts & Scholars)
• About Chorazin (Wikipedia)
• The Tale of the Witch of Berkeley by Rob Hardy (twistedtree.org.uk)

* This edition may or may not feature Mike and Will singing an exclusive acapella rendition of ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’, accompanied by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge (spoiler alert: it doesn’t).

In this episode Mike and Will pack their portmanteaus for a holiday in HELL (well, Denmark actually) as they tackle ‘Number 13’ by M.R. James! Thanks to our reader this week Kirsty Woodfield.

Also in this episode Will and Mike:

• Coin ‘The Jamesian Wallop’
• Tackle the schleswig-holstein question
• Discuss hellish subjects such as alchemy, German sunlounger etiquette, and Toploader
• Inexplicably find something funny about the phrase ‘the Danish area’

Show notes & links:

• Viborg on Wikipedia and Googlemaps.
• ‘The Shadow of the Occupant of Number 13’ by Helen Grant (at Ghosts and Scholars)
• The Significance of Number 13 (at Squidoo)
• ‘Warnings to the Curious’ by S.T. Joshi & Rosemary Pardoe (ed) (at Amazon)

Don’t forget to join us for our next episode when we will be looking at ‘Count Magnus’!

Mike is away on holiday at the moment so in lieu of a full episode we are pleased to present a full reading of M.R. James’s essay ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’, read by Tom Hemmings!

Regular service will resume in a few weeks when Mike returns from his reckless galavanting.

Notes

‘Stories I have Tried to Write’ was written by M.R. James in November of 1929 and first published at the end of that month in ‘The Touchstone 2’, a publication of Eton College where James was Provost at the time. The editors would no doubt have preferred to have received a completed ghost story of the sort James had produced for the Eton Boy Scouts two years previously (‘Wailing Well’, one of the last James ghost stories to find print during his lifetime) but instead they received a short essay in which James runs briefly through a number of story ideas that never saw completion.
Some of these stories are the merest hint of an idea (the Christmas cracker, the tap on the shoulder) while others provide the outline of an almost completed story, with settings, characters, names and so on all prepared. As James mentions in the essay, some of these stories he not only tried to write, but did write, only later deciding they were not good enough for publication. A draft of the Marcilly-le-Hayer story can be found among James’s papers in King’s College Library and was publishes in Ghosts & Scholars 22 in 1996. Likewise, the draft of the story involving two students at King’s was found and published in Ghosts & Scholars 12 as ‘The Fenstanton Witch’.
Other story elements James mentions in the essay hint at plot devices that James did actually use in some of his published stories, for instance the mask that appears amongst the curtains brings to mind the leering face that peers through the hedge in ‘The Rose Garden’ and similarly in James’s story ‘A Vignette’, a story written in 1935 and not published until after his death in 1936. James’s reference to ‘common objects being vehicles of malice’ was an idea he later fleshed out into the macabrely humorous fable ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ which was printed in another Eton publication, ‘The Masquerade 1’ in 1933.
The essay saw wider publication when it was included in The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (Arnold 1931), and since that time many authors have yielded to the temptation to flesh James’s ideas out into complete stories. The most notable being Sheila Hodgson who produced not only a series of stories based on the ideas (published by Ash Tree Press in 1998 as ‘The Fellow Travellers and Other Ghost Stories’), but a highly enjoyable series of radio plays which were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 1976 and 1992. As far as I am aware these radio plays have never seen the light of day on cassette or cd but can be tracked down by anyone with a search engine, bit torrent client and ‘relaxed’ attitude towards copyright law. Or so I am told. *cough*.
More information on the essay and the various stories it has inspired can be found in the excellent ‘Stories I Have Tried to Write’ story notes at Ghosts & Scholars.

In this post-Halloween spook-tacular of an episode, your hosts Mike and Will attempt to answer the following thorny questions:

1. Is it unlucky to sleep in a room near an ash tree?
2. Is Mrs Mothersole a MILF?
3. Are you down with the Castringham Sickness?

If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more of the above then pull your deep leather armchair closer to the roaring fire, refill your glass of port and prepare to join Mike and Will as they delve into dark and devilish goings on in 17th & 18th century  rural Suffolk in M.R. James’s The Ash-tree!

Big thanks to Katy Ross (@dreamkitten) who was our reader for this episode.

Links

• Great Livermere on GoogleMaps
  M.R. James grew up in Great Livermere and it is widely believed to be the inspiration for Castringham, the setting of ‘The Ash-tree’.
• Photo of Livermere Hall
  Sadly the hall on which Castringham Hall was based was demolished in 1923 but a photo of it can be found at the Lost Heritage website. Note the extensive growth of foliage visible around the sides of the hall!
• ‘The Ash-tree’ story notes at Ghosts & Scholars
  Exemplary M.R. James resource Ghosts & Scholars features an excellent set of story notes on The Ash-tree penned by M.R. James expert Rosemary Pardoe.
• James & Great Livermere at SuffolkCoast.co.uk
  An interesting article about James’s connection to Great Livermere and stories it inspired.
• Sortes Sanctorum & Sortes Biblicae at Wikipedia
  The history and origins of using the Bible for divination.
• Spiders in ‘The Ash Tree’ by Jacqueline Simpson
  An article from the Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter no. 5 on James’s use of spiders in The Ash-tree, with particular reference to a peculiar mini-plague of spiders that hit Bury St. Edmond’s in 1660!
• Bible Quotes from The Ash-tree @ Bible.cc
  ‘Cut it down’ – Luke 13:9
  ‘It shall never be inhabited’ – Isaiah 13:20
  ‘Her young ones also suck up blood’ – Job 29:30
  ‘Thou shall seek me in the morning and I shall not be’ – Job 7:21

Episode 3 sees us tackle ‘The Mezzotint’ by M.R. James and delve into the world of sinister collectable artwork of a kind not often featured on the Antiques Roadshow.

In this episode:

• Terror!
• Art!
• Golf!
• Alternative endings!
• How NOT to choose a babysitter!
• Mike gets all sentimental about his university days.
• Will moans a lot and bellows “In your FACE Cambridge!”

This week we tackle Lost Hearts by M.R. James, a spine-chilling tale featuring ghostly orphans! Talking rats! Diabolical alchemy! Gore! A shower scene! (sort of).

Also in this episode:

• Mike tweaks his hurgy gurdy around the house
• Will says ‘Dun Dun Duuunnn!’ more than is strictly necessary
• We both says ‘evocative’ more than is strictly necessary and then get really, really depressed

A big THANKS goes out to Kirsty Woodfield who brought a much-needed touch of class to the proceedings by doing an excellent job with the readings.

Show notes:

• Read Lost Hearts at thin-ghost.org
• Aswarby Hall on Google Maps
• St. Michan’s Church, Dublin
• Orpheus and the Orphic Poems
• The Worship of Mithras and Mystery Religions
• Neoplatonism
• Simon Magus

In Episode 1 your hosts Will Ross and Mike Taylor discuss M.R. James’s first published ghost story, Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, in which crocodiles are purloined, religious pimping staffs brandished, sinister tomes examined and unholy terrors unleashed on an unsuspecting scholar in the darkest depths of rural France.

Also in this episode: Mike grumbles bitterly about carnival folk while Will insults Bury St. Edmonds before whipping out his Testament of Soloman and scrawling a cock and balls in the margin.

Show notes & links:

• Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook (in .pdf format)
• Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges at Wikipedia
• Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges on GoogleMaps
• A picture of the famous crocodile!
• Study Guide at LitGothic.com
• Ghosts & Scholars Website